


A Study in Monstrosity

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [9]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, Not as cracky as it sounds who am I kidding, Prompt Fill, Vampire AU, Werewolf AU, victorian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:05:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthony Stark is taking a season to spend away from managing his father’s company directly, back in the Americas, in order to aid his old friend Dr. Banner, who is being pursued by a criminal organization that Anthony himself owes a downfall or two. They left marks on him, and a curse he’s kept hidden ever since; however, while he hunts the Ten Rings, Anthony discovers he is not the only monster who wishes to burn their organization to the ground.</p><p>Victorian Vampire/Werewolf AU. You heard me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Injury-related typing-limitations have prevented me writing anything new, but they’ve given me time to proofread the first chapter or so of this. So... here we are. Working on proofing the second bit as we speak.

It took Anthony Stark far too long, so he thought once he knew, to notice that he was not the only one chasing a certain criminal mastermind called merely ‘M’ through London, and far out through the rest of Britain. He blamed his lack of familiarity with the terrain. While once convinced that few places on earth could be as twisting and maddeningly complex as both New York and San Francisco in his native country, Anthony had changed his mind within his first day spent in London.

He had been called in to aid a friend being threatened by M and his secretive, highly organized and ruthless little army of fellow-criminals who called themselves the Ten Rings. Anthony had run into their ilk before, and had scars to show for it––amongst other things less subtle than mere scars. A chance to get his claws into them, and also aid his old friend Dr. Banner, had been more than enough to tempt him across the Atlantic. He had been prepared, he thought, for anything.

Of course, he had been quite wrong.

In retrospect, it only made sense that a crime boss with such power, influence, and reach would earn himself more than a few enemies along the way, but other criminals––and as he began to see the marks of his rival’s trail, once he knew to look for them, he became increasingly sure that the creature could only be criminal in nature––tended to be clumsier in their pursuits for power and revenge. It was disconcerting to the so-called mad inventor and part-time vigilante hero, to find this one hunted very nearly the same way that Anthony himself did.

It was... interesting.

Donning the occasional frightfully convincing disguise (often with aid in temporary physical changes thanks to Dr. Banner) along with new accent and new mannerisms, Tony found himself more and more often scanning crowds in the gambling dens and districts full of ladies of ill repute, trying to fix as many faces as he could in his memory, so that he could see which ones came up more than once. He knew that twice already, they must have crossed paths without knowing, now that he had traced most of his rival’s crooked path, and found useful information about M that he might have otherwise missed in the process.

At one such time, whilst Tony was dressed and acting as the half-Spanish cousin of a moderately well-off Marquis, a lady approached him who was quite memorable. The place was a particularly ripe den of sin, complete with bar, gambling tables, and a room full of opium-smoke in the back. The crowd was more mixed, insofar as ethnic makeup, than elsewhere in the city: men from tours in India, some who were of Indian descent but had served well and become wealthy enough in armed service to the empire to make their way to English shores, and several nearly middle-class merchants from the primarily-Chinese districts near Limehouse. The air even outside the opiate-focused parts of the house was thick with smoke, and ladies from the brothel upstairs circulated through the crowd, luring the occasional customer away from drink or dice or cards, in favor of another still baser vice.

The lady who approached Anthony did not look to be part of that oldest of professions; in fact, she seemed distinctly out of place, though no one else in the room seemed to notice. There was an odd glimmer about her, which Anthony attributed to what he though was a small illusion-stone in her necklace. Women commonly wore such minor trinkets to hide little flaws like scars or freckles. What this lady concealed, the inventor could hardly guess, but he wanted to find out.

She was tall––at least as tall as himself, long of limb, with flawless pale skin and the most brilliant green eyes Anthony had ever seen: like they’d been carefully crafted from the darkest and finest shards of emerald, and given to her as a gift upon her birth. Her hair was done up like a proper gentlewoman, and she wore clothing fine enough––dark green and black, with occasional gold trim––to suggest she was more than a little well-off. She didn’t belong here, and there was a slightly wicked curve to her smile that suggested she was often doing things she shouldn’t, and might like to do some of them with Anthony himself, especially as she said softly, “Good evening to you, Mr. Stark.” Her voice was like smoke and dark velvet.

To say his interest was piqued would be putting it mildly. “And hello to you,” Anthony murmured, one eyebrow raised. “I have no idea who you are, but if it’s your plan to kill me then I would recommend against trying it.”

She laughed, low and confident and unbothered by his manners as most ladies would surely be. “I’m not here for such a thing tonight, no; although I’m curious as to why that is your first assumption.”

“You’re very well-dressed, you have a bit of illusion or other visual distortion about you, you’re very self-assured, but also reserved in a manner that suggests you aren’t being overhasty––this is planned. Also, you seem to know my name, despite my own disguise, which is interesting, given that I’ve never seen you before in my life.” He smiled brightly. “May I buy you a drink, ma'am?”

The lady laughed again, brighter this time, her eyes bright with mischief and curiosity alike. “You’re even sharper than you look, Mr. Stark.”

“Well, I am disguised at the moment.”

“If they have any half-decent scotch behind the bar, I’ll have some,” the lady said.

“You know they do; it helps lure in the occasional wealthier clientele who feel some need to publicly debase themselves.” He gestured at the barkeep, catching his attention, and requested a scotch. He noticed that the man did not so much as glance at his companion, and began to wonder. He shot her a look. “It’s not an illusion, is it?”

Her smile widened, looking very sharp suddenly, with an edge of something fierce that Anthony seldom saw many women display. Anthony’s own cousin, Miss Virginia Potts, was among them; as was the charming foreign assassin Miss Romanov, with whom he’d crossed paths several times back in his native country.

“No wonder my first thought was that you must be an assassin.”

“Not your first deduction?”

“The deductions resulted in several possible theories; my instincts highlighted one or two as being more likely than the others. I try to balance logic with a bit of intuition.” _Intuition_ , he chided. _Instinct is the baser word: avoid it._ And he did avoid little things like that, since his first meeting with the Ten Rings––just as he avoided touching silver when he could avoid it; although he had been relieved to find that merely touching it was uncomfortable and stinging, rather than akin to the searing agony that occurred on the occasion he was cut with it.

“So I see.” She glanced at the oblivious barkeep as he delivered the scotch, and reached over to slide it before herself as the man turned away.

“Do people just see me talking to myself, then?” Anthony asked.

“I’m hardly invisible,” she said. “They merely are inclined not to notice me; that takes up far less energy.”

“Clever. I like it.”

“Do you?” She smiled that slow, thoughtful and frankly wicked little smile again.

Anthony felt his mouth go dry, and reached for his own drink to wet it a little. “So who are you, then? And why have you sought me out so cleverly?”  
“I’m curious,” she said simply, and shrugged. “Little more than that, but that is more than enough, for I’m rarely so curious as to make any sort of appearance, even this sort.” She smirked a little. “Not before such a clever hunting-hound, in any case.”

Anthony snorted slightly. “I’m no one’s dog.”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose not. No dog hunts quite so cleverly without direction from anyone else. You’re more like a wild feline, or a wolf.”

With an effort, the inventor kept his expression masked and unaffected. “And you’re a viper, clearly.”

She smiled, touching two gloved fingers to cover her lips for a moment, her eyes downcast. “You flatter me.” The lady shot him a different sort of look, then: wary and keen and warning.

Surprised, Anthony wondered precisely what chord he’d managed to strike with that comment, that he hadn’t struck when he suggested she might be an assassin. He then wondered if she’d thought the same, after calling him a wolf, but dismissed the thought. “Why are you here?” he asked, soft and thoughtful. “Who and what are you, and why are you here?”

Her smile turned thin and cold. She reached for his hand, resting her own atop his, and her eyebrows rose at the flicker of pain the inventor couldn’t quite conceal; he hadn’t noticed the silver ring she wore on the outside of her glove. Her expression turned more thoughtful, then. “I see we have rather more in common than I had first thought, Mr. Stark,” she said softly.

Anthony felt a chill down his spine. Two slip-ups in three years: not a bad track record, but still worse than he’d prefer. At least the first slip had been in front of someone who cared more about his well-being and keeping him alive and safe than she had fear of any of his monstrous qualities. This woman, Anthony had no doubt, held no such reservations. “I’m not at all certain what you mean, Lady.”

She stood up, abandoning her barstool, and leaned in close. Anthony didn’t move a muscle as he felt her breath––oddly cool, very oddly cool––on his ear. She smelled of autumn leaves, ice and something else––something that explained why her lips felt as cool as her breath. The lady in green and black and gold smelled of bloodlessness close to her skin, while traces of old blood clung to her clothes: tell-tale signs that her nature was as monstrous, if not more so, than his own. Anthony’s pulse quickened.

Then the lady whispered in his ear, “Some of us can shape-change a bit ourselves, you know. Keep in mind.”

Shivering a little, Anthony turned his head a bit, so that his face was nearer to her neck, his breath warm there: a little warmer than the average human’s. “I’m aware. You must be an elder, then. Well, darling, you hardly look it.”

“And you look very composed for someone who ought to be half-mad.”

“I was mad long before this.”

She made a small, amused noise. “So was I.” She kissed his cheek lingeringly, breathing him in a little with senses almost keen as a wolf’s, though not quite. “I look forward to crossing your path again, Mr. Stark.” She began to pull away, but stilled when Anthony touched her arm––he didn’t grab, didn’t try to steer her: merely touched, giving her the option to pull away if she still wanted to. That alone gave her a bit of pause.

“What’s your name?”

She shot him an odd, appraising sort of look. “Loki.”

“Interesting given name.”

“I don’t exactly have a true ‘christian’ one, you might say,” she chided. “Goodnight, Anthony.” She slipped away like a shadow, heading for the thickest part of the crowd.

Anthony stared after her, feeling stunned and disconcerted and little horrified, but also fascinated and a bit aroused. “Goodnight to you, too,” he muttered, and saw her head turn a bit toward him. He smirked a bit: her senses _were_ nearly good as his, for her to hear him past the sounds of the crowd, more than two arm’s lengths away. “Lady Loki.”

She turned her head just enough to show a sharp little smile, then vanished into the crowd as though she’d never been there at all.

 

~~

 

Anthony was beginning to suspect that his rival was more aware of him than he was of his rival. It was increasingly disturbing.

The suspicion started out seeming ridiculous, so subtle was the evidence. He had very surreptitiously broken into the main residence of a lieutenant of sorts, in the strange hierarchy of the Ten Rings, and begun to rifle through the man’s correspondences, when he found two particularly likely-looking letters still sealed. Then, upon closer examination, he saw traces of the wax smeared just a little, but in such a way as to suggest the wax seal had been near-expertly removed without breaking it, then re-heated and carefully closed once more. Someone else had read the letters before their recipient.

He had thought of his rival as a possible culprit, but dismissed it, recalling that this man had a number of other enemies, many wealthy enough to hire particularly good private detectives, or perhaps even well-trained spies if they were really ambitious. He used the same methods as whoever had first opened it, read each letter, then replaced the seals and re-arranged everything on the desk precisely as it was before he had touched it; a little thing aided by his perfect recall.

The problem was that little things like that began to occur with increasing frequency. A boot-print just a little out of place, almost deliberate-looking, guiding his eye to a particular loose floorboard, under which some useful thing might be found. It happened four times in such little ways, and then once in a far less subtle manner.

Anthony had planned to interrogate a man with deep pockets and even deeper connections to key members of the Ten Rings. He was a professor, never convicted of any particular crime, but there were... suspicions. There were several rumors about him, in London’s underworld, and not a one of them didn’t turn Anthony’s stomach. He planned to face the man and discern with finality just how monstrous he might be.

What he found was a number of policemen outside the professor’s quarters, all looking very somber. Anthony walked past with an expression of seemingly only half-interested curiosity, and spotted an officer just ending his conversation with the professor’s housekeeper, who looked terribly pale and deeply disturbed. Anthony knew her; she was the sister of Dr. Banner’s own housekeeper, who had told Anthony all about her. He strode up, and gently called, “Mrs. Anne Harrison?”

She looked up, startled.

With open concern, Anthony stepped closer. “We’ve met once or twice before. I’m Anthony Stark. I couldn’t help but notice––do you need someone to accompany you home, or perhaps to your nearest kin?”

Anne’s shoulder slumped. “Mr. Stark, I would be quite grateful. The scene in there.” She covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes watering, though she was stoic enough that no tears actually fell. “I’ve heard people accuse Professor Franklin of a great many horrible things, over the years. And some days I could almost believe them, sir, but that scene in there was still one I could’ve gone my whole life without. I would be most grateful if you might take me to my sister.”

Anthony offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Harrison. If it’s not too much to ask, but the number of policemen, the graveness of their look and your own dismay have planted the idea in my mind––I take it that Professor Franklin is no longer with us?”  


“Not as anything more than a weathervane,” the housekeeper said, and covered her mouth. “Oh god, that sounds horrible.”

Smiling a little, Tony reassured her, “It’s quite alright. I’m told I have a slightly morbid sense of humor myself, and no hard has come to me for it.”

She smiled up at him. “No, I hear harm has come to you for reasons quite aside from that. I’m glad to see you’ve not been twisted by it, if I may say so. Others...” She glanced back toward her former employer’s home. “I cannot say the same of others.” Then she shot him a curious look. “My sister thinks you’re something of a detective, Mr. Stark. Is that true?”

Anthony considered. His approach to matters criminal had enough elements of that sort in it that he nodded. “Part of what I do is detective-work, yes.”  
“You must be very curious then.” She bit her lip. “I should not be, but I am. He was hung, the professor was.”

“I gathered, from your gallows humor.”

She snorted at him and swatted his arm. “That’s a terrible joke for a gentleman to make.”

“So is referring to the professor as a weather-vane. It is a good thing that you are no gentleman.”

She shook her head at him. “You Americans have no sense of decency, at times, I do swear.”

“Is that why you’re more open with me than with most gentlemen of my sort?” Anthony asked lightly. “You and your sister both. Dr. Banner says it’s part of why he gets on with you. Like me, he’s not exactly the son of anyone from a respectable bloodline.” He thought vaguely of his father’s wealth, but also of the way his father had raised him: not richly, but so that he had to get his hands dirty and take care of matters himself. It was not only in the laboratory and workshop, but in aiding the household staff on major cleaning days. Howard Stark had been to England and claimed to hate it, particularly the arrogant sons of businessmen he met there who had no callus on their hands to indicate they’d ever worked hard for even a single solitary day in their lives. He’d told his own son many times that there was a reason such men so often lost business, riches, ambition, and their health very young.

“I suppose so, sir,” Anne said meekly. “That and you don’t look at us, or talk _at_ us like most rich men do.” She shot him a look. “I’ve met a lot of other rich Americans, working in Professor Franklin’s house. Most of ‘em do as the English do, while they’re here. I don’t know what makes you and Dr. Banner so different, but it makes my life a bit easier, so I thank you.”

“We’re both very self-deprecating, and American,” Anthony said. “That means that no matter who we’re speaking to, so long as they’re not actively harming someone else, we consider them to be at the least our equal, and usually worth shielding from anything particularly painful, when we can. I suppose it’s only natural that we make a point of speaking to people in this country, regardless of their station, the way we would speak to our own kin––within the bound of common courtesy, in any case. I don’t make terrible noose-related jokes with most people, but I feel safe making them since you started it, let’s say.”

She laughed at him a little, though there was a little sadness to it. “It wasn’t the noose that really shook me up as much as what was painted on the wall with–” Her voice lowered, going more quiet. “W-well, I think it was with his blood,” she said. She covered her mouth with her free hand again, this time looking genuinely distressed.

“What was it?” Anthony asked, softly as he could.

“It––it said, ‘THE RUMORS ARE ALL TRUE’ in tall letters,” she whispered. “Then, in the corner, almost out of sight behind the wardrobe door, there was another one I just can’t understand.” She shook her head. “Smaller letters. I could only make out the first part, but I think it said ‘Dear Mr. S,’ but who leaves a _letter_ written in blood like that?”

Anthony nearly stumbled and brought them to a halt, fighting the urge to run back and burst into the crime scene. He was grateful that Anne hardly noticed, given how hard she gripped his arm and the way she was shaking, she apparently needed the halt as much as he had. “I think I know,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I need to know what that message says, Mrs. Franklin. I know it may sound insane, but I think that it might have been intended for me.”

“Mr. Stark-” She cut off, here eyes suddenly wide. “But how––why...”

“I was not walking past his home without reason. I had intended to have a rather important conversation with him today.”

“Yesterday he told me he was to be left undisturbed as long as possible today, no visitors or interruptions,” she said nervously. “I thought he was locked up in his study, and so went to tidy the bedroom when I found him––or what was left of him.”

Anthony began to look thoughtful. “Mrs. Franklin, I would like to ask you something, and I need you to know that should you wish to refuse, I will understand, as it is not without risk.”

“What is it, Mr. Stark?”

“Can you vouch for me to the police? I plan to tell them that I’m a private detective formerly in the hire of Proffessor Franklin, now in the hire of his next-of-kin. Who _is_ his next-of-kin, by the by?”

“He has a married daughter in Hertfordshire. I believe he left most of his money to her.”

Anthony nodded. “Right, I recall hearing of her, now. Will you help me?”

“You really think they’ll let in a private detective?”

The inventor grinned a wide and almost disconcerting grin. Then, in a perfectly-imitated accent straight out of northern Lincolnshire, he said, “Oh, Mrs. Franklin, I can be terribly convincing when I want to be.”

Anne’s eyes widened considerably, but she half-smiled a little. “I’ll do it, Mr. Stark, but only to see what on earth you plan to say to the poor lads.”

“I’d hoped you would.”

 

~~

 

After an impressive amount of bluffing about his connections to various important personages at the nearest court, a little flash of money, and an air of effortless stubborn confidence, Anthony Stark made his way past not only the Chief Inspector, but the local Sergeant as well, which indicated at least that the police knew quite how serious this death was, and how important and dangerous the seemingly harmless-looking Professor Franklin had really been.

Anthony made a show of looking about the room, commenting in irate tones about them taking out the body before he could even arrive, then stepped closer to the blood-painted wall–– _oddly discolored, now why is that?_ ––nostrils flaring slightly while he had all of the officers at his back, unable to see his face as he took in the array of scents in the room, only to nearly gag when something mixed with the blood on the wall hit him hard, making him dizzy and leaving his head throbbing for a moment until he took a half-step back and breathed in through his mouth and out through his nose a few times, slowly, to clear it. _Ammonia, you rotten bastard. That_ stings _and you know it._ “You had hounds try to pick up the killers scent, I take it?”

“One of our best, yes, but something put them off, left them sneezing.”

“Ammonia. It’s mixed with the blood. This one is professional.”

He heard a bit of muttering from the men behind him. Anthony pretended to only incidentally catch sight of the additional message in the corner, by the wardrobe. He stepped toward it slowly, stepping over a bit of excess loose rope on the floor without even glancing at it. “Now then! What have we got here?”

“It’s a message, but from what we can tell, it seems to be in some sort of code,” one of the officers offered.

“Yes, ducky, I can see that,” Anthony said drolly, shooting the young inspector a sharp look before returning his attention to the message on the wall. It did indeed begin with the heading _Dear Mr. S_ in lazily flowing script, written in blood. From there, the blood turned to ink. The body of the message was a series of characters consisting primarily of numbers with occasional letters thrown in seemingly at random, which Anthony was hard pressed to decipher on the spot, even with all of the knowledge of code-breaking he had at his disposal. It wasn’t any of the usual basic spy codes, and if it had been a book-based code there would be some hint as to which book to use, possibly in the signature, but the bloody little note was, as it were, unsigned. And it was not an altogether concise message, by the looks of it. Anthony pulled a small notepad and and pencil from his pocket and began making a show of copying the numbers down. He didn’t need to, given his perfect recall, but acting to his audience’s expectations was always a good plan; it made it all the easier to surprise them later, if necessary. “Not a simple code, this one. Something strange with it.”

“Yes, we can see that,” drawled the inspector. “Are you quite done, Detective?”

“I’d like a look through some of his letters if you don’t mind.”

“They’ve been burnt, long before we got here,” the sergeant said.

 _He’s lying_ , Anthony noted. _Oh, now isn’t that interesting. He already suspects I’m either a fake, or that I was hired to keep tabs on him and some of his men, I’ll bet._ He resisted the urge to smile, shooting the policemen a resentful glare. “Were they, now?”

“Yes, detective.”

“Then I suppose I’m done here.” He straightened up and started to tuck his notepad into his pocket as he strode past the sergeant, who paused him with one hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. Very low, so that his men couldn’t hear, he muttered, “I expect you know, having worked for the professor here, who your _real_ employers are, if you’re worth so much as tuppence.”

Anthony took on an cagey, wary look. “If I had any other employer, Sergeant, I think I’d be wise enough to keep it to myself.” He looked the man up and down quickly, appraising. “Just as you do, I’ve no doubt. And our _shared_ betters are well-served by it. Let’s say it’s likely best for both of us not to inquire much further, given that––and that’s as much on my end as yours, Sergeant. I don’t know more about this than you do.”

The sergeant raised an eyebrow. “His daughter?”

“Knows nothing. I’m keeping it that way, now let me put on my show and get done with it,” Anthony warned, even quieter still.

The sergeant nodded, satisfied. In more normal tones he said, so the others could hear, “And you’ll keep us informed if you work out that code, then?”

“I will, but it’s all Greek to me so far,” Anthony said, sounding put-out, and earning sympathetic half-smiles from the other policemen. “It’s been lovely meeting you all, gentlemen. Good day.” He then sauntered out into the street, and met back up with Anne around the nearest corner. Switching back to his more usual accent, he asked, “How did I do, you think?”

“I think you’d make a fine showman, Mr. Stark.”

“My thanks. Now, I understand you have need of employment, rather suddenly?”

“Yes, sir. I have enough to make it by for-”

“No need. I’ve just rented a house, you see, to prevent myself both imposing on Dr. Banner and driving him insane all in one fell swoop. I do, in fact, have need for a housekeeper, for the next two months at least. How much was he paying?”

Wide eyed and hopeful, she told him, and truthfully to boot.

Anthony smiled. “I’ll pay double that, and you’ll have more than enough time, and my aid, to find another position considerably in advance before I even consider leaving the country. You’re a good woman, Mrs. Harrison.”

 

~~

 

That night, Anthony found a snug, unobtrusive booth in the corner of another part of London’s underworld, ignoring the amateur boxing match on the other side of the room in favor of watching the crowd and––even more interesting––those on the outskirts who watched, with shrewd attention, both the crowd and the fighters equally.

Anthony contemplated the numbers on the wall, tried numerous codes, and even mathematical formulae, to decipher them, but could come up with nothing. He was missing something. _A message aimed at me_ , he thought. _This one already knows who I am, then. If he knows that, he’s likely done a bit of research._ He grimaced. It had been tricky enough, keeping people from quite recognizing him as the world-famous Howard Stark’s son. Back in the states, it would’ve been genuinely impossible, given that his face was often in the papers, but that happened far less frequently here in Britain. People who made the connection––American, surname of Stark––often asked, but it was so easy to say, “No, no. There’s no relation. I haven’t even met him.” And they believed him. It was incredibly refreshing, actually.

It did, however, mean that he was not altogether certain of what people in this country generally knew about Anthony Stark, the wild and often scandalous son of an inventor who put Edison to shame and worked hand-in-hand with Nikola Tesla on the first successful feats of engineering in the field now known as aetheric mechanics. Often, Anthony wished that Tesla, rather than Howard’s business partner Obadiah Stane, had been his godfather, as his mother had suggested. Things might have turned out very differently, in his life.

Shaking off such thoughts, Anthony took his notepad from his pocket with some reluctance and looked at the numbers, rather than relying on memory. There was something about them, and thoughts of engineering and aetheric mechanics, that was starting to itch at him.

The first number, 53, had been set apart from the others by a wide space, and was treated differently. The rest of the numbers were separated by commas with no embellishment save the occasional errant, and somewhat inexplicable other punctuation marks at seemingly random intervals. After the 53, it was:  _20, 7,, 8, 7, L, y,, 1, 8, 15, e,, t, 1, 53, 16,, 27, d, e,,  d, 8, e, 16’, t,, 6, 79, 34,, y, 8, u,, t, 8, 8,, m, u, 6, 1,, 27, 7, 16, t, e, 86, 85, 53, 8, 7,,._

Anthony fixed on _20, 79, 34_ : the only purely numerical little segment in that first section. He then shook his head and looked back at that first number: 53, with seven dots around it, equally spaced, as though orbiting the number. Why was that structure so damnably familiar?

Then the inventor’s brain lit up like christmas and he sucked in a breath. _My God, it’s the periodic table!_ He felt the urge to kick himself for not thinking of it sooner. His father, Tesla, and himself had done more than any other persons since the first widespread-use of the periodic table to _add_ so much to it. _6, 79, 34 = C Au Se_. _Cause._ “You brilliant son of a bitch,” Anthony muttered, then grimaced a bit, reminded himself of the infamous incident during which he’d first properly met Miss Natasha Romanov, and added, “Or daughter. I won’t rule that out just yet.” _Although,_ he thought, _even Natasha would’ve had trouble stringing up a grown man the way this note-writer did. She lacks the necessary height and reach, as well as weight. Perhaps I_ can _rule that out._ He felt almost a bit disappointed, recalling a certain mystery woman of his recent acquaintance.

He focused again on the code, taking _53    20, 7,, 8, 7, L, y,, 1, 8, 15, e,, t, 1, 53, 16,, 27, d, e,,  d, 8, e, 16’, t,, 6, 79, 34,, y, 8, u,, t, 8, 8,, m, u, 6, 1,, 27, 7, 16, 52, 86, 85, 53, 8, 7,,._ and breaking it down to:  I _Ca, N,, O, N, L, y,, H, O, P, e,, t, H, I, S,, Co, d e,, d, O, e, Sn’, t,, C, Au, Se,, y, O, u,, t, O, O,, m, u, C, H,, Co, N, S, Te, Rn, At, I, O, N,,._

Anthony laughed aloud, almost startled-sounding, before he could stifle it. _You cheeky bastard!_ Then the rest of the decoded message promptly sobered him.

_I had initially meant to leave him for you to question as well, dear rival, but his crimes possessed in them more monstrosity than even I have ever had within my twisted little heart, and I am as far from sainthood as may be possible for a gentleman to be, while remaining a gentleman at heart, as I like to tell myself I still do. My anger overcame my restraint, in his case, particularly because I found, before waking him, a box of morbid souvenirs kept under his bed like a child’s box of treasured toys. They were expertly preserved with a taxidermist’s care, let us say. I burned them in the nearest graveyard, which I knew to contain one or two of his victims. You are a mildly monstrous hero, and murder does generally offend your sensibilities, I do know. I myself consider it a necessary evil, and know myself to be less merciful and just than most; I thus try to restrain my rage in most cases when dealing with men whose very existence offends me. I do so for the sake of decency as well as practicality. However, of those I have killed in my time, this man is the one I regret the least of all. I’m sure you have at least one person you’ve killed, about whom you feel similarly. All of us monsters do._

Anthony tucked his notepad back into his pocket with numb fingers and headed for the bar. After that, he desperately needed a stiff drink or several to take some of the edge off. As a man who looked very drunk fell off a stool, Anthony quickly claimed it. He ordered whiskey-and-water and tried not to think about boxes of horrific souvenirs made from parts of children. He finished the first drink in two swallows and ordered two more.

“One for me as well, please,” said an almost-familiar voice to Anthony’s left.

The bar was crowded, with only a few spaces unoccupied. People simply stood leaning on it, where they couldn’t find a spare wooden stool to perch on. Anthony was not in a mood to converse, but something about that voice tugged at his attention nigh-irresistibly. Upon looking, he was glad he took the time to look.

On the stool beside him––and they were just close enough together to dissuade anyone trying to squeeze in between them––was a tall man with dark hair a bit longer than the common fashion. He was pale, lean and wiry of build. His coat was off, which Anthony understood should be considered slightly scandalous for someone in clothes quite so fine (the tailoring of his waistcoat was outright distracting, such that Anthony almost understood any concern about propriety due to this man’s relative undress) and thus obviously well-to-do. That said, he was hardly the only one in the stiflingly warm room to be sans-coat. Anthony was as well, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but he had worn deliberately inconspicuous clothes that he tended to wear, back home, when he went through factories and workshops full of smoke, soot, fire, showers of sparks, and other minor hazards that could easily ruin a nicer coat. And dressed a bit more drably, his workers tended to regard him with less unease, which was also a bonus.

In any case, this particular seedy pub was not exactly where most men sought to be _proper_ , and clearly the tall, dark, and painfully handsome man sitting to Anthony’s left looked comfortable with his surroundings, albeit a bit haggard otherwise. The longer he looked, the more Anthony reminded himself to tread carefully. The etiquette of men who occasionally, or even consistently, enjoyed other men as well as the average man enjoyed women, could be precariously different from one country to another. Just because this one appeared to be dressed like an aesthete (that coat across his lap was black velvet from the look, and the exquisitely embroidered dark green waistcoat with gold trim was quite elegant) and happened to be exceptionally pretty, meant nothing.

So he started with the assumption that he knew only one thing, and that was that he knew nothing. With that in mind, Anthony made some conversation. “You look as though you’ve seen a day even worse than mine.”

The man glanced at him sidelong with eyes of almost unnatural dark green. He smiled thinly, tiredly. “I assure you that I have,” he said. He was pale enough to look outright unhealthy, at second-glance, and there was a tightness at the corners of his eyes indicating a bit of pain. “What’s the worst of yours?”

“Just a murder, and news of something worse,” Anthony said, not bothering to check his words with his usual care. He was too tired for it, and he had a feeling the stranger wouldn’t appreciate sugar-coating.

That seemed to startle a small laugh from the man, and a self-deprecating half-smile that almost reached his eyes this time. “I hadn’t expected you to come out with it all quick as that.”

Anthony raised an eyebrow at the phrasing. “You expected me to have something like a murder to discuss?”

“You might have noticed the English tendency to beat around the bush so frequently as to wear a circular trench in the ground around it,” the stranger said, sounding amused. “They never cut to the chase quite so.”

That made sense, and wasn’t insincere, but Anthony wasn’t sure it was actually an answer to his question as the stranger implied. He didn’t make mention of it, however: not yet. “You’re not English, then?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You don’t have an accent from elsewhere that I can quite identify, but I admit I can’t quite tell where yours is actually from in England, either. It’s a very vague sort of mostly-English accent, you’ve got.”

“I’m from Norway,” the stranger said. “And I’ve lived here a long time.” He smiled a little. “You’re still stuck on my response to your mention of murder.”

“It’s been a long strange day, and I met someone almost as strange with eyes like yours before.” Anthony inhaled a little, testingly, but to his annoyance only got the smells of smoke, a few dozen human bodies close together in a too-warm space, and the sour odors of beer and liquor. Getting any closer would be impolite.

The stranger shot him a look, then, curious and intent. “Have you, now?”

“I have. Any relation, maybe?”

“Depends who you met. Did you catch her name?”

“I never said it was a lady,” Anthony said, slowly smiling.

The stranger half-laughed and half-sighed, running a hand through his hair. “You’re quite right, Anthony Stark. It’s been a very long and harrowing day, and also a strange one. I’m not quite up to my usual standard of brilliance at present: my apologies.” He smiled at the barkeep when the man delivered his drink, with the air of sincere appreciation that wouldn’t be at all out of place on the face of a well-practiced con-artist pulling the old Spanish Prisoner trick, accepting money from some charitable soul. Once the barkeep was gone, however, the mask dropped like it was made of too-heavy and too-brittle clay, quietly shattering back into an expression of bone-deep weariness and something... well, _harrowed_.

As a man who was by no means slow, Anthony recognized the man before him suddenly, and the woman he’d seen before, and the person who had mixed a bit of ammonia into Professor Franklin’s blood before painting the wall with it.

“So this is you, then,” Anthony muttered.

Loki looked up, held his stare with mixed curiosity and what might have been amusement if not for the dark look in his eye that made him look far, far older than his face might otherwise indicate. “This is me.” He extended a hand. “Loki Farbautison, at your service.”

Anthony accepted the handshake with only a little caution; the vampire’s grip was careful in the way that one would have to be, with hands capable of such strength as elder vampires were known to possess. Loki’s hand itself was only slightly cool, dry, and not quite as soft and flawless as it looked upon first-glance. “Anthony Stark,” the inventor returned. “But you already knew that.”

“I did.” Loki nodded, lingering a bit before releasing Anthony’s hand, and noting that the inventor hadn’t quite seemed to mind. “It’s a credit to your abilities that it took me some weeks to work that out. And I’ve been to the Americas several times over the past decade, and have thus seen you in at least three newspapers; I should have caught on far sooner, and might have, if you were any less sharp.”

Anthony nodded a little. “I do hope you don’t plan to go reporting to any local reporters here. I’d be very annoyed.”

“As would I; there is good reason I avoid the press. It’s not as easy as you might think to hide from people who _know_ they’re looking for one of my kind, of a certain age.”

“What age is that, exactly?”

“Older than the catholic church.”

Anthony’s eyebrows raised. “Wow.”

“And, well, Christianity as a whole, really.” He drained half of his drink in one sip.

The inventor glanced at the glass, then at Loki, asking a silent question.

“Most of human blood is water,” Loki said. “And in London, as well as anywhere else in the world that it’s readily available, alcohol often is a component in human blood, too. This is just a slightly higher concentration than might be gotten from a meal.” He offered a faint half-smile. “And before you ask, I don’t generally kill anyone when I do that, if I can help it. On the rare occasion that I do kill someone, they tend to deserve it, and I’ve no inclination to taste them. Nor do I have more than one fledgeling. She’s still in Norway, incidentally, and has not changed anyone, herself.”

Anthony blinked a few times at that. _Not lies_ , he noted, and that surprised him almost as much as Loki offering such information freely. “Well, I suppose that would help you in regard to remaining inconspicuous.”

“Which is how I’ve lived so long, yes.” Loki smiled. “Your intelligence is quite refreshing, you know. It’s so seldom I run into anyone who can keep up with me in conversation, let alone in a hunt.”

“About the hunt...”

“I’m inclined to have... _words_ , with their leader.”

“I’m inclined to get a bit of my own back, and keep them away from a very good friend of mine.”

“Does he know what you are?”

Anthony hesitated. “Yes. And I know what _he_ is.”

Loki appeared surprised. “I wasn’t aware that Dr. Banner had any such thing to hide.”

The inventor looked momentarily both amused and chagrinned. “Hide. Yes. Well, we’re inclined to keep it that way. He’s having enough trouble wooing the lady he wishes to marry without certain fellows being sent out to capture him.”

“So the pair of you aren’t...” Loki trailed off, looked momentarily like he’d just forgotten some normal human etiquette, and cleared his throat awkwardly to cover it, but didn’t look away.

“We aren’t what?” Anthony was genuinely curious.

“Let us just say that I find some particular qualms Christianity has to be very _annoying_ , and forget on occasion that they’ve sunk their claws so deeply into modern culture,” Loki said simply.

“Oh,” Anthony said, smirking. “No, he’s not my lover.”

The vampire shot him a curious look.

“Why? Would you like to be?” the inventor added, before he could stop himself.

“Yes,” Loki said, without hesitation.

Anthony’s mouth went dry. “Oh good.”

They both looked away from each other for a moment, quietly glancing around the room and taking note of any and all available exits.

“You have a home here?”

“I have a set of rooms, for the moment. My usual residence is some ways outside London, but for the foreseeable future, my work is here,” Loki said. “Your recently acquired house is not quite ready for occupation, I take it?”

“Yes. And Banner is a very light sleeper prone to bouts of undue concern about unexpected noises from other rooms in his home.”

“You make noise then. Excellent,” Loki muttered.

Anthony felt his skin prickle, and the already warm room was suddenly that much more uncomfortable. “You are dangerously distracting, I want you to know.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Care to follow me, then?”

“Should there be a pause between our exits, or-”

Loki gestured vaguely, and the same faint glimmer of illusion-like effect––Anthony’s family had once had the Gift in force, but it had long ago faded a bit, such that the most recent few generations had only a little of the Sight, letting them see things like the presence of magic, whether someone was lying or not, and whether or not something was poisonous––that had graced his female shape returned.

The inventor shivered a little as it extended to cover him, pleasantly cooling in the stifling-hot air of the room. “That really is a nice trick, by the way.”

“Thanks. I perfected it sometime shortly after the fall of Rome.” He slid off his barstool, waiting for Anthony to do so as well, then stepped close enough to leave only a hand’s width of space between them. “You’re certain about this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re aware what I am, what I’ve done, and doubtlessly have more than a little idea what I’m capable of, Anthony.”

The inventor considered. He considered the three other dead men he knew had been taken down by the vampire before them: each one responsible for myriad crimes committed over years, unlikely to stop even if they were handed over to the law. The Ten Rings had many ways of getting their own back from the justice system of any country they had sunk their claws into: England, the Americas, and Anthony knew they had recently gotten their first foothold on the European continent. Lastly, Anthony considered how Loki had looked before their conversation had started, and he considered the note left to him in a mixture of Roman-alphabet and the language of chemistry. “You know who I am. I get the feeling you even have a better idea not only of what the Ten Rings did to me, but what I did to them the first time around.” He could tell by the slight flicker in Loki’s expression that he was right on the mark, there. “And you know what I am, in no small part _because_ of all that.” He smirked a little. “Elder or no, I could still leave a fair number of scars on you that wouldn’t heal too easily even for someone like you, but I don’t want to. And I don’t think you want to make me, either.” He breathed Loki in: autumn leaves, ice, bloodlessness, dry blood, and spices. “All the same, I think I want to get close to you, because you’re brilliant enough I’ve been fascinated by you before we’d even properly met.”

Loki was staring now, hungry-looking and rapt.

“I also think things have been interesting, but too slow-moving in my war here, working on my own, just as it’s been for you. We both keep hitting little hitches and barriers, despite all our brilliance. What I think most of all right now, Loki, is that the very last thing they would be prepared for is _two_ insane and genius monsters like us working together to burn them to the ground,” Anthony said. “Now, the question is, are you interested in _that_ , as well as fucking me?”

The vampire made a small sound low in his chest. “Well. Firstly, I think we should leave with haste before I attempt to ravish you against the bar. Secondly: oh god yes.”

“Don’t sound so Christian,” the inventor teased, lightly. “Especially not after claiming to be older than Christ.”

“I never said _which_ god. And I’ve met a few.” Loki seized the front of Anthony’s waistcoat in one hand in a tight, incredibly strong grip. “You want to see another vampiric trick?”

“What sort of trick?”  


Loki grinned, and the whole room and all the people around them vanished. For a moment, Anthony couldn’t tell if his senses were overloaded with sensation, or numbed, or somehow both at once. Then he felt wood floor under his feet again and the world around them came back into focus––except that they seemed to be in a different location entirely, not overly well-lit until Loki made another vague gesture and a few lamps along the wall flickered to life with oddly green flame that faded quickly into the more usual yellow-and-blue. The room over Loki’s shoulder also showed a flicker of light that it hadn’t before. “How many tricks like that do you have?” Anthony asked, a little breathlessly, eyes quickly taking in the house around them; they stood at the top of a large staircase, and the room at Loki’s back was, so Anthony hoped (and it was only logical), a bedroom.

“A baker’s dozen or so; it’s all age and bloodline,” the vampire answered absently, then pulled him closer with hands on either side of his waist and caught Anthony’s mouth with his own.

The inventor promptly forgot all contemplations of magic, physics and vampiric powers, his focus narrowing down to Loki, and little else. There was a much to focus on, in that regard: the flavor of spices and snow with a coppery hint of blood, the feel of that long and lean body against his, and oh god that _mouth_. A thousand or two years walking the earth, Anthony mused, had certainly given the vampire time to perfect the art of bone-melting, searingly good kissing.

Distantly, he was aware of Loki pulling him into the bedroom, and the door closing behind them. He was tossing his coat and Loki’s aside carelessly, while the vampire made short work of the buttons of first Anthony’s waistcoat, then his own. From there, it was all hasty tugging at cloth, friction, and desperation for a while. Anthony made a rather indecent noise when the vampire pinned him ungently against the bedroom door.

“Oh, you could become an addiction,” Loki murmured, after breaking away to pull Anthony’s shirt over his head only half-unbuttoned.

“You should talk,” Anthony panted, ignoring the prickle of anxiety concerning his myriad scars, particularly the deep ones that went from just below his left clavicle up to the top of his shoulder, where there was a narrow gap of unmarred skin before the jagged lines continued to the top of his shoulder-blade. The wolf that had bitten him had been a more than impressive specimen: large and incredibly strong, but more than half-mad from time in one of the Ten Rings’ many cages, and probably a bit of starvation. Anthony’s rather explosive and destructive escape had freed it, and added more than a little panic to that already pre-existing madness. There had been humanity and intelligence in there, Anthony recalled; he’d seen that when the wolf abruptly let him go, looked horrified with itself to a near-human degree, and had fled in panic, where all the usual werewolf stories indicated that it should by rights have torn him apart without hesitation. That was no small part of why younger, fresher lycanthropes were so rare, these days: the more behaviorally stable bloodlines hinted about in myth seemed to be increasingly rare, as time went on.

Loki traced the toothmarks with his fingertips, a look of fascination on his face. “You must have bled a great deal.”

“I did. Before the fever took hold.”

“That normally takes over a twenty-four hours,” Loki murmured “Well, except some of the earliest old bloodlines from around Rome, but those were all wiped out not long after the Crusades.” He paused, seeing Anthony’s expression, and added, in careful tones, “in theory.”

“In theory,” the inventor agreed. “How long did it usually take for one of that sort, out of curiosity?”

“For the more impressive ones, it could take as little as an hour, maybe two. At most, five or six hours.” The vampire was staring at him with slightly wide eyes, now. “They caught one from the old Roman lines. They knew they had lost a specimen, but no one dared mention how _rare_ it had truly been, not where such as myself might hear of it. How the _hell_ did they catch one?”

“You met a few, I take it?”

“One of them was Hela’s––my fledgeling’s––mother.”

Anthony blinked. “How, uh, how exactly did they differ from the usual run-of-the mill werewolf?”

“She was Hela’s mother, and I met her after Hela’s bicentennial birthday,” Loki said slowly. “They seemed to age more like vampires than like humans, in their way; it set them apart from the other bloodlines, along with a tendency to be far less chaotically insane. Age only made them more resilient to all but silver and fire. They were the most ruthlessly hunted down, however, being the most prized trophies, and the closest to being demonic, back then.”

“Wow,” Anthony muttered. “I got incredibly lucky in my lupine sire, then.”

“You did.” Loki grinned, shrugging out of shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat casually. “I suppose some celebration might be in order.”

“You had something in mind?”

“Yes.” Loki moved in closer again, casually opened Anthony’s trousers, and knelt.

Anthony promptly forgot how to form words, or indeed coherent thought of any kind, because he’d thought Loki had _kissing_ perfected, but that was as nothing compared to how skilled that damnable mouth was at doing unspeakably marvelous things to his cock. All the inventor could quite do was grip hard at the doorframe for dear life and make sounds that might have been curses, or might have just been moderately embarrassing syllables indicating that Loki might be causing permanent damage to some of Anthony’s higher faculties. _Worth it_ , was all the inventor could think as Loki’s mouth and throat, relaxed and pliant, took him in to the hilt, while one of those graceful-looking, pale hands cupped the rest of him, caressing just _so_.

The inventor lost track of a lot of things after that: the passage of time and his own name, for example.

After a few syllables that Anthony was sure were, in fact, swearing (though in what language, he couldn’t be certain) he managed to pant out something along the lines of, “Fuck, please, Loki, I’ll be finished way too soon if you keep-” Then the vampire hummed and swallowed around him, and made Anthony come so hard his vision whited out for a few seconds and his legs nearly gave out altogether, but there were two incredibly strong hands pinning his hips hard against the wall as Loki’s mouth slowly released him, pulling away. The inventor made a sound he would forever claim was certainly _not_ a whimper.

Then Loki was on his feet again, entirely nude just a few seconds after standing, and pressed against him close and a bit warmer than before, his breathing uneven. “I’m confident you’ll recover in time to come once or twice more while I see if I can fuck you straight through the mattress.”

Anthony gripped Loki’s hips hard and stifled a moan. “Hnngh. God. Loki-”

“I did get mistaken for a god of that name a _few_ times-”

“Your mouth––may be the most dangerous part of you. In sooo many ways.”

“I’ve been told,” the vampire murmured. “Though you have something of a reputation for being a talented lover yourself, Mr. Stark.”

“Call me Tony.”

Loki smiled, warm and close. “Come to bed then, Tony.”

“Oh god yes.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which arguing with mages is a favourite pastime of Loki's, we find out what his elder vampire self has against the Ten Rings, and good times are had after Anthony does a bit of showing off in the lab.

After several rounds of sex throughout the night, the both of them finally succumbed to sleep near dawn, and slept into early afternoon. It was the longest stretch of solid, blissfully dreamless sleep Anthony had gotten almost since the night he’d been bitten. That said, he also hadn’t had such satisfying sex since then either, due to the scars and so forth; so that might have been a major component.

And Loki the elder vampire, as it turned out, slept less heavily than most vampire stories advertised, during daylight hours. Anthony hardly minded. It gave him a chance to get some of his own back by giving Loki a long, slow and unhurried fuck, keeping his pace maddeningly unhurried until Loki was gripping the sheets tight, and finally broke over from desperate writhing to outright begging, at which point Anthony proceeded from slow and easy to hard and fast with sufficient efficacy to make the vampire almost scream as he came.

Both of them had needed a few minutes to recover from that round.

Once sure Anthony had his breath back, Loki mused, “I think we’ve irreparably damaged the wall behind this bed’s headboard.”

“Sacrificed for a worthy cause.”

That earned a low laugh from the vampire. “I suppose we should start planning all-out war at some point.”

“Oh yeah. That.” Anthony stretched a bit, his back popping twice in a satisfactory manner. “I suppose we should start with mapping out everything we know, and our resources. I’m sure you know some things I don’t, and have more than a few other tricks and resources up your sleeve than I could guess. And I know a few things I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

“Really?”

“You’re ancient. Not omniscient.”

“Well, clearly.”

“How much do you know about how I escaped from the Ten Rings after they captured me?”

“There were a great deal of explosions involved.”

Anthony grinned wide and fierce. “Did any of the info you got from them about me include how I caused all of those explosions and got out of there fast enough not to be incinerated myself?”

“The details there were a bit hazy, I’ll admit. What am I missing?”

“The really fun part. And I’ve only improved the design since then.”

Loki sat up and shot him a curious look. “Design of what?”

“I’ll show you, if you like. I brought two of them with me. They’re at Bruce’s.” Anthony suddenly looked a bit alarmed. “Oh. He might be a bit worried, having not heard from me since yesterday afternoon.”

The vampire chuckled at him. “Well, then. I’ll come with you. Guests tend to act as a means of deflecting a host’s anger, in my experience.”

“Well. Dr. Bruce Banner’s anger, in particular, is nothing if not unique.” Anthony shot Loki a thoughtful look. “You and sunshine...”

“It stings, but it doesn’t take much shade to protect me against it. Furthermore: this is London. It will be raining in less than ten minutes, and I’d be stunned if any sort of sunlight made any appearance afterward. It’s past noon and still grey out.”

“Is that why you’ve spent a long time in this country?”

“Admittedly, it’s convenient.”

 

~~

 

Arrival back at the home of Bruce Banner, with an elder vampire in tow, had already promised to be something of an occasion. It didn’t help that one of Dr. Banner’s professional associates had also chosen that day to visit.

“Dr. Banner is in the library with one of his letter correspondents,” Mrs. Green, Banner’s housekeeper, informed them upon their arrival. “They’re getting on quite well. Shall I inform them of your visit?”

“Yes, do. I’m sure Dr. Banner has been somewhat concerned. Is his guest anyone I might know?”

“I believe he’s called Dr. Strange,” Mrs. Green called back to them, as she headed down the hall. At Anthony’s back, Loki stiffened. The inventor noticed the increased tension and shot him a look, but before the vampire could open his mouth to explain, Mrs. Green had already turned and made it down the hall. Both Anthony and Loki could hear her inform Banner and his guest of Anthony’s arrival with a guest of his own, a Mr. Farbautison.

“Not a surname he’s run across before, at least,” Loki muttered.

“You know Dr. Strange?”

“Well, yes. How rude would it be for me to vanish at this point?”

“Rude.”

“Then this will be... interesting.”

Anthony raised an eyebrow in question, but Mrs. Green chose that moment to return to them and inform them that Dr. Banner wished to see them both.

They proceeded down the hall, Anthony with mixed curiosity and caution evident, and Loki with a perfectly masked expression and an air of reserved unconcern that didn’t fool his companion for an instant. Anthony entered first, leaning around the doorframe and saying quickly, “Bruce, I can explain.”

Dr. Banner shot him a glare while his companion, tall, dark and richly dressed in a suit of purple-black with a red waistcoat, looked sincerely amused.

“I do _hope_ so, Anthony Stark. You could have at least sent a telegram or-”

“I believe that may in part be my fault,” Loki chimed it, and stepped into view. “We were rather occupied with a project in which we have mutual interest.”

Strange suddenly looked at though he might draw a weapon if he had one on hand. “ _You!_ ” He raised a hand and started to gesture, but Dr. Banner took hold of his wrist.

“Not in my house, you don’t. How often do you wind up setting your surroundings on fire, once you start that sort of thing up?”

“Frequently,” Loki offered.

“You say not a word,” Strange all but growled.

“Civility, please, Dr. Strange,” Loki chided, raising both hands, palms-forward in a gesture of evident harmlessness. Not that anyone in the room, by then, would have believed any such thing. “Whatever you are thinking, I assure you that it is wrong.”

“I think you should be set on fire,” Strange shot back.

“Then he’s right, Dr. Strange,” Anthony cut in. “I couldn’t disagree with you more.”

Strange shot the inventor a bemused look. “Do you have any idea what Loki–– _Farbautison_ was it?”

“It’s as close to having a true surname as I can offer, really, given I was born before surnames were really the fashion,” Loki offered.

“Are you aware what he is?” Strange said, eyes narrowing.

“Yes,” Anthony shot back. “And I’m fine with it. Thanks.”

Strange hesitated.

Loki cleared his throat. “It’s lovely to meet you, Dr. Banner. I’m Loki Farbautison, and I’m an elder vampire a couple of millennia old. Anthony and I have a common enemy and plan to aid each other in wiping them out. Dr. Strange and I have met before, as you can see.” He slowly lowered his hands, folding them behind his back more casually.

“I never would’ve guessed,” Bruce mused. “Good to meet you, Farbautison. Steven, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Anthony Stark. He’s a guest in my home and as such his allies against the Ten Rings are to be treated civilly here.”

Dr. Strange’s brow furrowed and he shot Loki an appraising look. “No more thefts, arson or political coups for you, Mr. Farbautison?”

“No one has offered me any sufficiently persuasive reward for such things in over fifteen years, so I see no point in exerting myself so pointlessly,” Loki drawled. “Thank you for asking, however. I see you’re doing well, too.”

“Better, I suppose,” Bruce muttered, and released Strange’s wrist. “Have either of you had lunch, then?”

“No,” Anthony said, at the same time that Loki reflexively lied, “Yes.” They exchanged glances, then looked to Bruce as though nothing were odd.

“From whom, Mr. Farbautison?” Strange asked innocently.

“Oh, you’ve caught me in a lie, bravo. Pardon me for trying to give them a polite way out,” Loki shot back, deadpan.

“Gentlemen,” Bruce scolded. “Please stop that.”

Loki had the decency to look a bit sheepish, the look of which seemed to baffle Dr. Strange more than anything else about this entire conversation so far. It satisfactorily surprised him into silence.

“Lunch is in half an hour, if you’re interested. Mr. Farbautison?”

“I might advise telling your lovely housekeeper that I’ve already eaten, but would not turn down tea,” Loki said, his tone perfectly calm this time. “I’ve found that works well enough on such occasions as this.”

“Certainly.” Bruce smiled slightly. “Now, I’m curious to know how on earth you and Anthony here seem to have found yourself allies all of a sudden.”

The inventor and the vampire exchanged glances eloquently.

“It’s a long story,” Anthony said.

“Then I recommend that you start now,” Bruce said simply. “Come further in. Strange, stop glaring and _sit_.”

“My apologies, Bruce,” Strange murmured.

“Oh, rest assured I’ll be asking for the story behind _your_ actions later.”

Loki smiled faintly and muttered to Anthony, “I like him.”

“I had a feeling you might get on relatively well.”

“Both of you as well, please. I have a couch for a reason.”

The pair in the doorway promptly obeyed, sitting side by side on the couch in question, opposite the two chairs now occupied by Bruce and Dr. Strange: Loki across from the former, Anthony across from the latter, in the hopes of reducing the chances that something might spontaneously combust.

“How did you meet Mr. Farbautison, Mr. Stark?” Strange prompted.

“Well... “ Anthony considered. “Hard to say, really. We’ve known _of_ each other for some weeks, but as to when we actually met face to face...” He recalled Loki’s female shape with sudden clarity, and recalled the mention of shape-shifting. His brain short-circuited with the belated realization _that wasn’t illusion, he can just––oh god he’s perfect._

“We crossed paths whilst hunting. Our goals have been parallel, and the crooked paths we’ve taken toward them have seen a fair bit of crossover. It was only inevitable that we would eventually run into each other,” Loki finished for him. “Of course, I wasn’t so recognizable as Mr. Stark.”

“You weren’t in your current shape, to be fair, and none of your activities I’d discovered could’ve been perpetrated by a person of the relative height and weight you seemed to be,” Anthony added.

“Less recognizable, yes,” Loki concurred, smirking a little.

“So you then sought him out?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” Loki said. “Brilliance appeals to brilliance.”

“Darling, you’re making me blush,” Anthony deadpanned.

Loki shot him a slightly surprised look and couldn’t quite smother an equally surprised laugh.

Strange seemed both disturbed and morbidly fascinated by how well the pair of them got on. “You are both after the Ten Rings, then. I’m aware they’ve been troublesome to Bruce, and he’s mentioned that you have suffered at their hands personally, Mr. Stark, but what of you, Loki?”

Anthony turned to look at Loki as well, then; he too was more than a little curious.

The vampire held Strange’s gaze steadily. “They destroyed the only home I had left, Dr. Strange, and nearly took my daughter Hela with it. Her lover is dead, the human families she has cared for and watched over for several generations have had their numbers cut in half––because they wished to catch an elder and _somehow_ -” He narrowed his eyes at Strange pointedly. “-discovered my age, by means of some stolen correspondences and other writings from persons they considered to be of interest.”

A long silence followed, the vampire and the mage staring at each other from either side of it’s vast chasm.

“My apologies,” Strange said quietly. “I know of Hela. She is quite possibly the best among your kind I have met, and the most merciful. Is she now well?”

“She lives. She is grieving, but she lives,” Loki said softly, “and she has purpose, as she helps them rebuild. They’ve moved to the nearest major city, and it seems to suit them well, under her care.”

“I wish her only well.”

“I thank you. When next I see her, I shall let her know.” He smiled thinly. “She did mention you before, and called your magic tricks helpful.”

Strange looked torn between sympathy, annoyance and amusement, then.

Anthony whispered, his lips hardly moving and his voice too low for the mostly-human men opposite them to hear, “Is she your daughter, as well as your fledgeling?”

Loki glanced at him sharply, then looked away again, but nodded once and answered, just as quietly, “Yes.”

It occurred to Anthony, in a series of deductive clicks, that he must have parted with Hela’s mother after his own change (how long after, he couldn’t guess) but before she was bitten by a werewolf. How it came about that he passed on the gift to his daughter, and crossed paths again with Hela’s mother next only two centuries later, the inventor couldn’t guess, but he got the distinct feeling it had been a complicated affair, and more than a bit painful along the way.

“I’m sorry to hear of your family’s loss, Mr. Farbautison,” Bruce said, interrupting the slightly overlong silence and Anthony’s thoughts both. “My condolences.”

“Thank you, Dr. Banner. I do apologize for having disturbed your home earlier, only to make it terribly somber thereafter.”

“Oh, worry not,” Bruce assured. “I have enough irrational anger, tragedy and madness in myself that this house has seen far, far worse.”

Anthony snorted, amused.

Loki appeared curious, but offered a smile and nodded thoughtfully.

“And now you and the infamous Anthony Stark are working in tandem?” Strange inquired, as though the full implications of this had only just now dawned on him.

Both the vampire and the mad inventor offered their most disconcerting smiles.

“Dear god.” Strange was half-smiling even as he started to look horrified.

Even Bruce looked a little disconcerted.

“We won’t burn the city down, I promise,” Anthony said. “Well, most of it. I can probably promise that _most_ of it will remain mostly intact.”

“So, Strange,” Bruce inquired. “How is it in your current residence in the far east?”

“It’s very quiet, and there are a lot of monks*,” Strange said.

“It’s not really quiet is it?” Anthony asked.

“Well, no, but I get the feeling it’s about to be quieter than London.”

“Most places are,” Loki said.

“True enough,” Bruce agreed.

The bell then rang for lunch.

 

~~

 

After initially chilly and uneasy exchanges between them, Loki and Dr. Strange eventually found a focal point allowing them conversation not altogether direct. That focal point was one Anthony Stark, who had the brilliant idea of asking Loki how exactly he managed to appear and disappear at will. Dr. Strange, being a bit of a mage himself and capable of still more complex and convoluted magics, listened to Loki’s explanation, and added in suggestions for improving efficiency, while Anthony asked questions which roughly translated their occult descriptions into more mathematical language.

Eventually Anthony was able to retreat a little from the conversation and shoot Bruce, who looked incredibly amused, a conspiratorial grin.

Bruce raised his glass in a silent toast to Anthony’s abilities to derail conflict in favor of other subjects, and interjected his own theories, biological in nature, in response to questions Strange put forth concerning Loki’s capacity for magic despite not being a mage or requiring actual spell-casting for most of his tricks.

“A very sound theory, Dr. Banner,” Loki responded. “I just planned to tell him that he constantly overcomplicates matters.

Strange frowned at him.

“Well, that’s a bit true,” Bruce mused.

“You’re not helping,” Strange said flatly.

Loki only smiled, mock-benign and shameless.

Under the table, Anthony elbowed him. “Be nice,” he said, just too low for human hearing to detect.

“Not a chance,” Loki muttered, equally quiet, his lips not even moving.

After lunch, Anthony and his guest retired to the laboratory while Bruce and Dr. Strange made their way to the study.

“Now, let me show you an example of me being a genius,” Anthony said, pulling a few large brass wall-switches at the bottom of the stairs.

A loud rumbling followed, and what had at first appeared to be two large metal storage containers began to open, light escaping them as the sounds of gears and other smaller, more refined mechanics rumbled ominously.

Loki stared as Anthony’s secret weapons were revealed, and began so smile wide and awed and wicked. “Well, then. I had no idea you were also the one recently perpetuating the myths of Spring-Heeled Jack, Mr. Stark.” He sounded a little breathless. “This armor...”

“Flight, resistance to bullets and electricity-based attacks, but not magic. That’s put me at quite a disadvantage against M and the Ten Rings in the past––not enough for him to ever catch or kill me, but enough that I have not been able to catch or kill him either.” He turned and looked at the elder vampire over his shoulder, arching an eyebrow as he inquired, “Care to help me become unstoppable?”

“Oh, Anthony,” Loki said, low and smoky and sweet. “It would be my genuine pleasure.” He gestured a little, somehow brightening the gaslight in the room. “To begin, I’ll need to know what powers these suits of yours.”

“That would be the reactors in the chest-pieces. I developed the first one whilst captured by the Ten Rings, based on work my father had done with far more large-scale models.” His fingers pressed into his chest where one of the reactors had been bolted to his ribcage. The accelerated healing factor provided by lycanthropy had dislodged it, and taken care of the shrapnel problem that he had needed the reactor and electromagnet for in the first place: a solution to one problem which created so many others. “This latter model also adapts to my own, more changeable nature. I have a feeling that will be more necessary than I had initially hoped.” He approached the suit on the left, aware of Loki following behind him, observing Anthony and his armor with equal interest. “We’ll be altering this one. As for this other,” Anthony stepped over to it, and with a few adjustments from a small multi-tool of his own devising, kept up his sleeve, he gently removed the glowing blue arc reactor from the slightly older armor, then turned and held it up between himself and Loki. “I share the design with no one, but I want to know if this sort of power might be workable in conjunction with alterations you might have in mind, of a less modern scientific sort.”

“The lines between science and magic are very narrow,” Loki murmured, “when one studies them both long enough.” He gingerly rested the fingertips of both hands around the edges of the arc reactor and sucked in a breath. The reactor’s glow dimmed, then brightened, before again regaining a sort of balance. Loki’s eyes flickered, aglow from within, and that glow was the same blue-white as the arc reactor. “Oh, that’s just _marvelous_.” He glanced up from the device to meet the mad inventor’s stare and smiled widely. “Oh, there is so much we might do with this.”

Seeing the mad light in the elder vampire’s gaze, along with the glow of the arc reactor, and that vicious smile, Anthony couldn’t help but find himself a little short of breath suddenly. _Beautiful, powerful, and devastatingly intelligent, oh this one needs to stick around_. He grinned back, then. “Where shall we start?”

“What are the most common weak points our opponents use against you?

“Psychic influence primarily. The rings he uses to rearrange and repurpose matter, as well as White Light ring on his left thumb, are secondary but still quite notable."

Loki let go of the reactor, and it took several long moments for the glow in his eyes to fade. “Wards, then, to start. The sort I use are simple, compared to what Dr. Strange might describe, and usually not too workable beyond my own self, given the power I have to work with, which is biological in nature and resides within my bloodstream. I do not often spell-cast as mages do because my spells do not work too well without my presence unless I put a good deal of power into them to keep them going without staying quite close to them. If I can find a way to channel power to shields and wards––of the same sort I have been using to avoid psychic and magic-based means by which the Ten Rings might discover me––by means of your device there, psychic interference would certainly no longer be any problem to you.”

“And the others?”

“Energy deflection is tricky, especially from the thumb-ring you mention, but not impossible. It’s usually exhausting for me to summon such a shield even briefly, but your power source may prove more capable. The rearrangement of matter is one problem which only brute force can cope with, in my personal experience. I have found no way to undermine it, but I have survived it many times.”

“As have I, by this point.” Anthony returned the reactor to his secondary suit.

“You mentioned that the one we plan to alter suits your ability to change shape?”

“Yes. It does not provide full coverage to my alternate shape,” Anthony explained, “but it collapses, folds into a vest-like section, along with  collar, and partial helm.”

“Astonishing,” Loki murmured, stepping closer and examining the joins and joints, where the metal might fold: narrow, elegant and perfectly crafted seams. “You are an artist and an engineering genius, Anthony. I have truly never seen, or even imagined, anything like this, and I have lived a very long time and have a vivid imagination.”

“Well then, Loki. Let’s see how you keep up with a modern young man such as myself.” He shot the vampire a challenging grin. “Let’s get to work.”

Loki’s teeth dragged across his lower lip as he shot the inventor fiercely amused look. _Challenge accepted_. “Yes. Yes, let’s.”

 

~~

 

Bruce descended into the lab some considerable hours later, long after Dr. Strange had taken his leave, and long after the sun had set. He was not at all surprised to find Anthony still neck-deep in alteration of his armor’s defensive and weapons systems alike, but he was a little surprised to find the vampire still present, looking just as rapt as the mad inventor as they intently discussed complex formulae to describe the particular shapes of certain energy wave-forms, and the unique adaptability of magic forces and energy.

The bio-chemist stood at the base of the stairs to watching them with amusement for some while. He knew Anthony was only rarely so caught up in enthusiasm as to lose awareness of his surroundings to such an extent as to not notice someone enter a lab he occupied, and the elder vampire had a similar wary and cautious air about him where such things might be concerned. For them both to be so caught up that they didn’t seem to notice Bruce’s presence was intriguing.

Loki’s fingers traced lines over the metal armor, leaving glowing green trails in his wake, which Anthony followed with thin wires and the narrow white-hot flame of a torch, tracing magic patterns with pale grey conductive metal, which was left looking oddly red-gold when the tempering fire finished passing over Loki’s magic. The metal did not look––normal, where it had been so altered. It had a strange sheen to it.

“I know one or both of you will have some need for rest, at some point soon,” Bruce interrupted, after perhaps five minutes enjoying the show, and once they seemed to have reached a stopping point.

Anthony jumped. The vampire did not, but his friendly half-smile did not quite reach his eyes when he lifted the mask-like shield that protected his eyes from the glare. It occurred to Bruce that Loki’s eyes appeared a little too fever-bright, with shadows under them that had been fainter when he had first arrived. Tony’s, when he lifted his own mask, merely looked a bit darker than their usual brown: nearly black, as tended to occur at particular times in any given lunar cycle.

“I suppose you have a point,” Anthony muttered. “I’m not exactly tired, though; particularly given that the moon is, ah, a bit close.” It wasn’t necessary that he change with the moon, he had discovered, but he was not unaffected by it. The desire for the change, and for bloodshed, tended to hit him hard––like a craving, like thirst––when the full moon was high. For now it was a restless itch under his skin, an excess of energy, and were he not so focused on his work, then certain baser urges would be a genuine distraction to him.

“I’ll not be weary until at least dawn,” Loki said, “though I appreciate the concern.”

Bruce shook his head at them both. “Goodnight to you both, then.” He smiled a little and made his way up the stairs.

Anthony called back, “Goodnight, Bruce.”

“Goodnight, Dr. Banner,” Loki added.

When the inventor glanced back at his companion, he noticed Loki’s stare fixed somewhere below his chin at first, before the vampire regained himself somewhat and again met Anthony’s gaze with a knife-bright smile. “Now, where were we?”

“Almost done with this run, I think,” Anthony mused, thoughtful. “You mentioned some sigils you wanted to apply.”

“For that, I’ll need your torch, actually. And for you to point out the edges not only of the whole suit here, but those that will be outer edges only once the suit changes shape with you.”

Anthony obliged, explaining as he traced, and Loki followed his touch with a few graceful applications of now green-looking torch flame. The vampire appeared intensely focused, his lips moving almost-silently through bits of incantation.

“You were a true mage, weren’t you––before your change?” the inventor murmured, halfway through this last process.

Loki smiled faintly, finishing off a bit of the spell before answering, “Yes, I was.”

“How much of your magic followed you, truly?”

“Little. Very, very little. I have had to adapt my new powers in its place. They are less––potent, in many regards; hence why my spells now fade without a source of additional power, be it myself or, in this case, something else entirely.”

Anthony nodded thoughtfully, watching him work, pointing out new sections now and then. They remained quiet for that last part of their work, save for Loki’s low voice and the low roar of the torch.

“Ready?” Loki then asked, his smile small and sharp, visible below the mask-like shield between his eyes and the torch-flame.

“Yes,” Anthony said, a little breathless.

Loki took hold of the inventor’s hand and positioned his palm squarely over the arc reactor. “Relax. Feel the hum of it.”

“I do.”

“Good. Now, do you feel this?”  
A sparking, bone-tingling thrum rolled up through the armor to the reactor and into Anthony’s hands, making the inventor gasp sharply. “Yes.”

“Excellent. Now hold on.”

Anthony’s breath hitched as the prickling, electric feeling increased, seeming to flow into him and rattle around within his skeleton. He could feel the suit, then, separate from himself, but not so separate as before. He focused intently, and one of the gauntlets flexed its fingers according to his will. “My god.”

“Good,” Loki breathed. “This might sting.”

It did: a blinding, stabbing flash of burning pain through his every nerve, then a chill: cold seeping in thereafter. Anthony exhaled a long, shuddering breath.

“Now let go.” The vampire’s hand reluctantly retreated. After a long moment, so did Anthony’s. The inventor tossed aside his protective mask and looked over their handiwork with a mad grin.

When it was done, Loki pulled back his eye protection and sighed heavily. He looked deeply weary, and more gaunt than before. His smile was bright and sincere, albeit exhausted. “Excellent. We should test it tomorrow.”

“Why not––oh. Well. It does seem to be nearly eight in the morning.”

“Seven-twenty,” Loki corrected.

“If I may ask... You look almost unwell. When did you last, ah... drink?”

“Almost two weeks ago. I’ve been––busy. I can manage, before I retire for the morning.”

“Loki. It _is_ morning.”

The vampire frowned slightly. “Ah. Yes, well-” He quieted when the inventor––warm and very, very alive, tugged him in close by the front of his shirt. He smelled of metal, spices, and something richer and wilder: forest earth and autumn leaves. And Loki could all but feel his heartbeat through their clothes.

“You’re being ridiculous,” the inventor said softly. “You know what I am almost better than I do. Blood loss won’t do much to me, especially so close to the moon.”

Loki’s eyes widened for a moment. “Anthony, I couldn’t-”

“Yeah. You could. And you want to.”

“Which is generally what makes it less wise.”

Anthony shook his head, pulling him still closer, hands settling on either side of the vampire’s narrow waist. His heart pounded with a mix of adrenaline and recklessness and prickling arousal. “Loki, you’re an astonishing man, and I’m inclined to have you on that table over there, or let you have me any way you like here, but I’d like you fully present for it. So drink.”

Loki’s pupils widened far enough that only the thinnest sliver of green irises remained visible and he made a low, slightly inhuman noise deep in his chest of mixed hunger and prickling arousal. “Anthony, you have got to stop being quite so disconcertingly beautiful and amazing,” he said, a little weakly, his fingers burying themselves in the inventor’s hair at the base of his skull, slow and gentle, then suddenly gripping sharply. He used the hold to pull Anthony’s head back, exposing his throat. He shivered when the inventor let him, and with such ease.

“I’m not inclined to stop being me, and I _am_ amazing,” Anthony responded, only a little breathless. Instinctively, his body relaxed into the submissive posture, which set off alarms in the more human parts of his mind, but there was less-human stuff near the surface tonight, and it was oddly content with this arrangement. The inventor let his eyes fall shut as he felt Loki’s cool breath on the tender skin of his throat. _Anthony Stark, what on earth are you getting yourself into?_ Then he felt Loki’s lips, softly caressing, pinpointing where his pulse was strongest, and Anthony admitted to himself, _I have no idea, but it’s too perfect to stop, and I want so much more of this: challenge and fear and this-_

“Anthony,” Loki muttered, his voice edged with a rumbling growl, but still almost hesitant. “The more you surprise me, the more I just want to _keep_ you.”

Anthony shuddered. “You won’t hear me complain. Please just-” He cut off with a sharp gasp at the abrupt sting of teeth piercing tender skin. He relaxed into the arm Loki had about his waist, relaxed bonelessly against him, feeling suddenly dizzy as fluttering hot and cold chills skittered across his skin, moving out from where Loki’s mouth fixed on his neck, and where Loki’s hands clung to him, pulled him in still closer. The inventor gave a breathless, broken-sounding whisper of, _“Yes, oh god just––Loki, yes_ ” and then fell silent, focusing on recalling how to breathe as Loki’s lips and throat pulled, and swallowed, pulled, and swallowed, in slow counter-point to rapid beat of his own pulse, which now seemed to be pounding very loud in his ears.

Gripping harder at Loki’s waist, Anthony rolled his hips and moaned a little at the full-body shudder that earned him from the elder vampire, who promptly spun them about and pinned him hard against the nearest wall. Anthony gave a low, pleased but still-hungry growl in response, his fingertips sinking hard into Loki’s flesh and pulling, scratching, down along his lower back to his hips.

Loki’s mouth broke away with an unsteady gasp, if only for a brief moment. His fingers in Tony’s hair gripped tighter, pulled his head back further, and Loki sharply bit again, with only a little less precision, on the opposite side of the inventor’s windpipe. He drank less slowly, less hesitantly, his teeth less gentle, tearing a bit deeper.

Anthony gave a low, not-discouraging cry, his hips moving against Loki’s in desperation, needing more pressure and friction. When the vampire obligingly slid one leg between both of Anthony’s and applied just that, with a very deliberate grind, Anthony’s eyes rolled back in his head and he nearly came just then, Loki’s name rolling off of his tongue in tones of desperation.

Then Loki’s mouth pulled back again, and Tony’s whole body twitched at the sudden loss of that blood-deep connection. His breath still heaving with arousal, he nearly whimpered as he felt the elder vampire’s tongue lick away all the blood from the fast-healing wounds on his throat.

“Not even a mark left to show for it,” Loki muttered, his voice a croaking rasp. “And you taste absolutely fantastic.”

Anthony shivered a little. “Is it––god, Loki, is it usually that––fuck.” He shuddered when Loki shifted his thigh again between his legs: a teasing grind. “Is it that _good_ , usually? For not just you.”

“Not for many,” Loki breathed. “And not often so intensely. It’s something I usually make an effort to tamp down when I sense someone being affected like this.”

“You didn’t then?”

“I couldn’t. Tried. Couldn’t, with you. I could feel how much you wanted––how you _still_ want _..._ ” He broke off when Anthony’s eyes fell open, wide and dark and fever-bright, to meet his own. “Tony, you are _perfection_ ,” he groaned, and caught the mad inventor’s mouth with his own in a hungry, desperate kiss. When Anthony returned it with fervor, and no little hint of teeth, Loki made an utterly indecent noise and set about swiftly removing their clothing.

The inventor aided him, hasty and ungentle, hungry for the feel of bare skin on his own. His eyes were half-lidded and his vision seemed edged in red the way it often was before the change, but the burning pressure to shift wasn’t there. It hadn’t occurred to him before that sex might provide an outlet for some of this aggression, but Anthony was more than happy to embrace it, along with the man currently pressed up against him. Loki tasted of cloves and peppercorns, blood and bloodlust, still with that undercurrent of something cooler like fresh snow, and Anthony wanted only _more_. He made a strangled, almost embarrassingly needy sound when Loki finally managed to remove his trousers and wrap one of those graceful, long-fingered hands around Anthony’s cock.

“ _Fuck_. Yes, Loki, please, _fuck_.”

“Please what?” Loki prompted, breaths coming in shallow, warm now from the fresh blood he’d taken, where it feathered across the inventor’s lips.

“You. Here. Now,” Anthony managed, his voice taking on an inhuman, growling harmonic on the last syllable. “ _Take me._ ”

“Perfection,” Loki moaned, low and sultry. Then his hand left Anthony’s cock in favor of the inventor’s pocket, from which he tugged a vial of oil Anthony had used on one or two sections of more delicate machinery earlier. “Will this do?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s fine.”

“You’re so warm, like you’ve got a fever,” Loki murmured, as he coated his fingers, slicked his own cock, and then set the vial aside on the nearest horizontal surface. “No small wonder you taste better than any liquor I’ve ever tried. A mouthful of you warms me right through, Tony, better than hot cider and brandy, and twice as rich.” He licked at Anthony’s throat again while his slick fingers found their mark and pressed in slow.

Anthony shuddered, aching with arousal. He wrapped a leg about Loki’s hips and   gave a hissing, growling sound of approval when the change in angle sent a shock of pleasure up his spine. “Loki, oh god.”

“What do you want?” the vampire purred.

“I want you to take me,” the inventor panted, “And I want you to bite me like that again right before you make me come.”

Loki made a small sound, then swore in a language older than Rome. His fingers left Anthony’s opening, and he bodily lifted the inventor a few crucial inches higher up the wall, then pressed closer and guided himself inside in one ungentle thrust.

The inventor’s head fell back against the wall with a dull thunk as he gasped for breath and tried to think of unpleasant things to keep from coming on the spot as Loki began to piston in and out of him: hard, merciless, bone-shaking and perfect. Profanities and encouragement tumbled from his lips in choked half-whispers as his fingers, already having wandered under the unbuttoned shirt and waistcoat Loki hadn’t had the patience to fully remove, now clawed ungently down the vampire’s smooth back, leaving stinging scratches in their wake. His nails only sunk in harder when Loki changed the angle of his movement, his grip on Anthony’s hips, and his pace all at once, so that he dragged his movements out into long, rough thrusts that dragged hard enough across the inventor’s prostate to send acute prickling spasms through him––so close to the edge it hurt, but not quite there.

“Beg me,” Loki snapped.

“Please,” Anthony rasped. “Fuck, Loki, please I need this, please, please give me this, just fffffnnngh yes,” he all but screamed as Loki’s teeth sunk in again and that pull––against his pulse, and against the pangs of desire to escape his own skin––began, and Loki’s hand wrapped around his cock, stoking tight and fast. The pleasure struck him as hard and deep as the pleasure of changing in the white-hot silvery burn of moonlight, and was about as blinding. He shuddered with it, cracking further and further apart as Loki rode him through it mercilessly, pounding harder until Anthony was gasping and shaking and boneless, hyper-sensitive to the near-painful aftershocks rolling through him even as he felt himself growing hard again.

Loki didn’t slow his pace, though he let up on the bite, licking at the wound slow and lazy, in sharp contrast with the unrelenting rhythm of this thrusts.

“Loki, I can’t, I can’t––fuck it hurts-”

“Do you want me to stop?” Loki asked, low and harsh. “I will.”

“N-no, no don’t stop, don’t-”

Then Loki’s teeth bit again, much harder, and Anthony was caught entirely off-guard by it as he came again with a shout, though there was an edge of something low and inhuman in the sound. His vision blurred and the sharp pull, the draining of blood from his veins, became almost suffocating. Boneless and wrecked and jerking with twinges of pain and pleasure, Anthony clung to his lover, feeling Loki’s movements become less controlled and more desperate before orgasm finally took him too.

The high didn’t cut out for either of them until, with one last thrust, Loki released the hold his teeth had on Tony’s neck. Through sheer determination, he slowed their descent so that they slid to the ground in a disheveled heap, rather than just collapsing outright. After one last long lick to get the last of the blood from the already-closed wound at Anthony’s throat, Loki rested his forehead at the juncture of Anthony’s neck and shoulder, and slumped there, enervated and well-shagged and blissful. He shivered a little when he felt Anthony turn his head just enough, with an effort, to press a light kiss against the side of the vampire’s neck.

“You, are too perfect for words,” Anthony rasped, voice low and muffled. “We should do this more often.”

Loki gave a low, sated hum of appreciation and agreement, and nuzzled a bit closer. “If we win this war, may I keep you for a while, then?” he murmured.

“Do you know, I was just thinking the same thing?”

They both laughed a little, and stayed close for a long while, catching their breaths and breathing each other in. After several minutes, once the mind-fogging high began to clear, Anthony asked, low and a little more cautious, “Are you––are you serious about that offer?”

Not lifting his head, Loki nodded, his arms about Anthony’s waist tightening. “Yes. Yes, I am.” _I’ve lived so long, and never met someone bright as you, tenacious as you, seductive and hungry and beautiful as this right here, between us._ _Odin only knows, I’ve wanted for it._ Eventually, he might find the nerve to say something similar aloud.

“Good.” Anthony stroked Loki’s hair, letting his fingers slide into it and not-quite tangle. “Me too.” He smiled faintly at the almost purring sigh the vampire gave in response. “We’re insane, you realize.”

“Of course.”

“Absolutely crackers.”

“Barmy.” Loki nuzzled a bit again. “Worth the risks, I think. Presuming we survive.”

“Oh yeah, that. You’d better. You’re too interesting not to.”

“I could say much the same.”

Anthony laughed a little. “This would be an excellent time to retire for the morning, I think.”  
“Is that a hint?”

“Do you really want to try and stand up?”

“Fair point.” Loki raised a hand, gestured vaguely, and with that swept them out of the lab and up into the quarters upstairs the inventor had occupied of recent, where they disentangled only enough to get beneath the sheets before sleep took them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The "it's very quiet, and there are a lot of monks" joke is a sort of reference to [this comic](http://www.bitemecomic.com/?p=512), and if you haven't yet read [Bite Me](http://www.bitemecomic.com/) by Dylan Menconis, you have not lived. It's my favourite narrative web-based comic ever, and it's finished! Go read it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Le Finalé

Being over two thousand years old, Loki would be the first to admit, does not make a person any more knowledgeable about the nature of such difficult-to-quantify subjects as love. He only knew himself very, very well, which meant he was all too aware of his weaknesses. He had a certain sort of weakness for brilliant and witty creatures, for clever people with bitter and biting sense of humor in them, for genius of various sorts, and for persons with excellent taste. He had a greedy weakness for unique, rare, and treasured things (or things worth treasuring, however overlooked they may be by most others) that would have put even the most talented professional thieves to shame.

In short: Loki could not predict his own heart much better than any other creature, but he knew what he liked, and he knew how to recognize a perfect storm when he saw one; however, once he had recognized such a person, the decision as to what he should do about the matter was just as ambiguous as ever. The realization that he had found someone he could easily fall for was always a rather jarring one, particularly given that he was still no better at discerning whether that fall might eventually prove mutual. Thus, he tended toward caution. There was a difference between identifying and recognizing qualities he valued, and becoming attached to them, after all. In theory.

Being over two thousand years old, Loki was also very aware that there are always exceptions to every rule. That didn’t stop him feeling fairly chagrined when they pulled the rug out from under him and sent him sprawling.

Which is why waking up an hour before dusk to find himself entangled with a certain mad inventor caused the elder vampire to feel at first quite content and even pleasantly possessive, until his self-awareness kicked in and he realized that despite his towering intellect, the wisdom garnered from centuries of living on earth and watching civilizations rise and fall, and his prized self-awareness, he was still a fool. Not that Loki ever doubted himself in the “I am a fool” department; there was a reason he had always been fond of Socrates after all; however, there was a key difference between telling oneself “I know only one thing, and that is that I know nothing” and actually being confronted with the fact that one truly knew nothing, to such an extent as to find oneself feeling fond and possessive and all too comfortable with the other participant in a romantic tryst that had lasted only two days.

 _Two days, Loki? Are you mad?_ He considered. _Well, yes, but in this case, that’s beside the point._ And really, he reasoned, it wasn’t just two days; It was more like two days of open flirtation and carnal indulgence after over a month and a half of very, very extensive intellectual foreplay with the both of them behind masks of anonymity. This did not, however, actually make him feel any less doomed.

Deep down in his heart of hearts, Loki Farbautison was nothing if not cynical. He could not help but regard the creeping warmth of something suspiciously like contentment in his chest as a sign that things were about to go horribly, horribly wrong.

The urge to flee out of the nearest window was not strong enough to actually budge him, regardless of his chagrined sense of foreboding. Instead he watched Anthony sleep, and made a few observations. The first was that Anthony was a bit more dressed than he’d been before they fell into bed, in shirtsleeves and trousers. The scent of smoke and London fog clung to his shirt and his hair. From that, Loki deduced that the inventor had gone out at some point, early afternoon, but returned before the heavy rain he could now hear outside had begun to fall. At a guess, he would hazard Anthony had been gone for five or six hours, and had returned to sleep at least two hours before Loki himself had awoken; although his state of only half-undress suggested he hadn’t intended to sleep for quite that long. At some point during that time, he had curled against the vampire’s side, settled an arm about his waist.

The fact Loki hadn’t woken at any point while Anthony had been moving about the room disconcerted him more than he would admit. He could only attribute it to still having Anthony’s blood, given so very willingly, in his system, causing his instincts to not register the charming young lycanthrope as a potential threat. The thought alone made him smirk a little despite himself. Slow and near-silent, Loki bent his head down, nuzzling lightly at the tender skin below the inventor’s left ear. Anthony stirred a little, but didn’t wake.

“Anthony.”

The inventor’s eyes squeezed a little tighter shut, a small crease appearing between his brows.

Loki sounded more amused, “Tony.”

A low, almost petulant growl followed. Anthony burrowed closer, tucking his face against the mad vampire’s shoulder.

“Now, darling. You wouldn’t want me to start this war without you.”

A huff. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Loki’s smirk widened, showing nearly all his teeth. It faded a little into something less smug when Anthony turned his head enough to bite at his neck, just sharp enough to make his breath catch. The vampire then sucked in a breath as the inventor suddenly rose just enough to roll him into his back. The inventor didn’t pinion his arms or grab at him, just kept his teeth in the same general area and braced his hands on the bed on either side of the Loki’s head.

As a vampire, Loki was subject to certain instincts where his major arteries were concerned, particularly those at wrists and throat; they bade him protect the areas closely without thinking, and also to relax bonelessly on the occasion he might offer them freely. The ambiguity of it here––caught by surprise before he could offer, not that he was at all unwilling––sent a jolt up his spine and a series of conflicting responses through his head. By the time his back firmly hit the mattress, he was dizzy, caught between struggling to pull back and lower his chin, and trying to arch further into the contact, all at once.

Then Anthony bit more sharply with a low, rumbling growl.

Distantly, the few remaining higher faculties still functioning in Loki’s head thought to themselves, _Oh, right. Full moon very soon._ Then the part of his brain that had gotten him into such brilliant forms of trouble all his life kicked in, and he thought, _Oh, yes, let’s see the darkest of you._ He relaxed, loose and pliant, save for his spine arching languidly to offer them both a teasing edge of friction where the inventor’s body pressed close.

Anthony didn’t bite hard enough to break the skin: just enough to leave it slightly red when he let up a bit, pulling back enough to lick at the fast-fading pink marks on Loki’s long, pale throat. As Loki surrendered, Anthony made a low, rumbling noise of approval deep in his chest, almost more felt than heard, then froze, seeming to recall himself. He murmured, lips never losing contact there, “You’re not afraid at all, are you?”

“No more so than I’m afraid of anyone or anything else I desire,” Loki responded, head still thrown back, though he tilted it to one side just far enough to meet the inventor’s stare when Anthony raised his head a little.

Anthony’s eyes were still dark, but the rich brown was now shot through with splintering shards of amber-gold: a bit of something wilder than a mere man peering through the cracks, looking clear-sighted, predatory and slightly alien. The inventor pushed himself up, his posture communicating more than his words possibly could: shoulders squared, back straight and head just low enough that he could still easily lower it and again bite at Loki’s long neck. As he held that dominant posture, something flickered in his stare, until his eyes seemed less like brown-black shot through with amber, and more like amber with just a few slivers of shadow.

The vampire kept his breathing slow, though a pleasant tension rolled through him: anticipation, curiosity, wariness and hunger. He held the wolf’s stare, examining how thoughtful, almost contemplative Anthony’s expression remained, despite looking so distinctly feral. Searching for words to see if Anthony could still respond verbally, he found himself inexplicably at a loss.

The long silence stretched on, communicating something Loki had found unique to wolves and their kin: a feeling, and a thought, at once crystal clear and utterly indescribable. It was recognition, acknowledgement, appraisal and connection. Shifting his weight back to one shoulder, where he had one arm bent and resting loosely beside him on the pillow, Loki shifted his hips just slightly. His other arm came up to mirror the position of its fellow. The sensuality of the movement was only incidental; he was giving himself leverage, and saw the flicker of challenge in Anthony’s gaze in response as it registered.

Loki arched an eyebrow, sardonic and languid and curious. “Now, what will you do with me, I wonder?” He gave a flick of the wrist, sending the inventor’s clothes elsewhere.

With a faint smirk, Anthony lowered his head again, breathing him in: spices and winter, and traces of borrowed wolf’s blood under his skin––and that last sent a possessive thrill through him. _Like I’m already inside him, like he’s already mine_. His nose brushed against Loki’s neck, followed by his tongue, and yes, there was an edge of forest there. “How much do you really know about wolves, Loki?” the wolf asked, mostly in Anthony’s voice, but with a thick undercurrent of something that lived in shadows, far out of sight of spotlights: something with very sharp teeth.

The vibrations of that rich voice against his skin, right over his pulse, and that edge of something wilder, made Loki momentarily lose track of his train of thought. “Some. I’m fluent in nonverbal communication with them, but admittedly some subtleties escape me-” He sucked in a breath when the inventor ran a proprietary hand down his side to his hip and pulled him forward and slightly up so that they pressed flush in a few key locations. Loki’s voice broke a little on his next syllable as he continued, “and as such I’m very curious as to what y–– _fuck_.” And then he was lost, one hand in Anthony’s hair and the other at the inventor’s shoulder blade with fingertips clutching hard enough to seriously harm an average human; although Anthony hardly noticed, busy as he was biting hard enough to bruise, hard enough to communicate, _Guess who is in control? Hint: not you_ , while his lips and tongue applied suction, pressure, and teasing around it, right over Loki’s pulse-point, marveling a little how the vampire’s body went bowstring-tight, yet so open, in such sweet surrender.

In conjunction with the bite, he rolled his hips, each movement bringing heat and pressure and just enough friction to made them both breath just a little harder. Then he released Loki’s throat and nipped instead at his ear, still moving his hips, in slow and drawn-out undulations, as he rasped, “Most wolves have some dominance issues, I’ve found. They struggle to be dominant until they are brought to submission. It’s all instinctive. I’ve felt those urges before, but you _meddle_ with them; because while having you inside me and drinking me down and breaking me apart is utterly amazing, the thought of taking you here while I can smell my blood in your veins is one of the most arousing ideas I’ve ever contemplated in my life.” He caught Loki’s forearms and pinned them on either side of Loki’s head, grinning wide and fierce when the vampire wrapped one leg around him at his hip. “Why is your neck so sensitive?”

“How much do you know about vampires?” Loki challenged, half-smiling, his eyes bright and a faint flush visible across his cheekbones: borrowed warmth, borrowed heat and strength. Exotic blood-types had their appeal, but the blood of other monsters was rarely so interesting, let alone so intoxicating. He could feel the charge of moon-tide  where he felt Anthony’s pulse against his skin, and it seemed to be catching, setting fire to borrowed blood and making Loki’s heart race. He _wanted_.

“I know a fair amount about vampires generally, but sexually? Well, that subject somehow doesn’t make it into most academic journals. It’s to do with blood, I presume?” The wolf nipped again, sharp, on the other side this time.

Loki sucked in a breath, then answered in less than controlled tones, “It’s vulnerability. It’s... _Ye gods, don’t stop_.”

“Keep talking.”

“I c-cahnnot focus well while you’re...” he trailed off into a moan. There was a mouth on his neck and his own instinctive desire for more of that, _sharper please_ , mixed in his mind with echoes of something more foreign, more purely _Anthony_. He wanted to let it roll over him, wanted to drink it in, and let himself be taken over by it.

Then it stopped: mouth and hips both. “Keep. Talking.”

After a bit of fervent swearing, Loki managed to explain, “It’s more than blood, with us. We get hits of other things––emotions, moods, power, manic energy, and even memories if drinking from one of our own kind, or others if we drink enough, which is always more than any mortal human can lose and live.” He sighed in mixed relief and desperation as Anthony’s hips began moving again. “ _Yesss,_ more of that.”

“So you bond in blood. Literally.”

“Yes. It’s––ahfk.” He trailed off into incoherency again because Anthony had taken him in hand and begun stroking his length, slow and dry and not enough.

“It’s intimacy. It’s getting inside someone else, and letting them get inside you,” Anthony murmured against his skin. “How much of me is already in you, before we’ve even gotten started?”

“Enough for me to know what that itching desire under your skin feels like. It’s as exquisite and maddening as you are,” Loki panted. His eyes fluttered open, darker than before. Some of the superficial humanity had drained from his appearance. “I can _feel_ it, in your blood, I can still taste it, and all I can think of is how much more I want of you,” he purred, smiling a smile of pure sin.

The inventor shuddered at the thought. “Oil. Now.”

Loki gave a flick of his wrist and summoned the vial they had used earlier from the pile of their clothes in the corner. He didn’t move his arms when Anthony released hold of them to take some oil from the little bottle and set it aside on the nightstand; although Loki’s fingers did then choose to grip the headboard firmly. Then Anthony slicked himself quickly before applying some only slightly less hasty preparation to his lover, while biting hard again at the vampire’s stretch of bare throat.

Loki bucked his hips, feeling a faint echo of familiarity: an impression–– _thought, sensation, memory_ ––he had caught from Anthony down in the lab: how it had felt being drained, the world going dark, surrendering that heat and power. Loki made an inhuman sound between growl and hiss, back arching. “ _Now, Tony, please_.”

The inventor obliged, pulling Loki’s other leg around himself, higher around his waist–– _such long, long legs: a man could get used to this_ ––and guiding himself in, maddeningly slow just to get another stream of breathless swearing in two different dead languages from the owner of the lithe, tight body beneath him. He tucked a pillow under Loki’s hips for a little better leverage. “Have you worked it out? What you’re missing about wolves?” he asked, low and ragged.

“What––” A groan, more half-coherent syllables as teeth just teasingly grazed his neck, then retreated, forcing Loki to recall how to breathe. _Not enough. Ye gods, not enough, never enough._ “N-no, what about wolves am I missing?” He was rewarded by less gentleness, and made a low, broken sound in response to the increase in speed and force.

Anthony pulled back enough to meet his stare, his eyes a vivid wolf-yellow: between amber and gold. “You know my past reputation,” he panted, “for casual affairs.” He grinned, crooked and flushed and breathless. “Things change. Instincts change, and me with them.” As their movements began to shake the bed, he concluded, “And _this_ is nothing casual, Loki dear.”

Loki’s eyes widened a little, as it sunk in through the haze. “ _Tony_ , you-” He cut off, unable to form words, but there was something raw in his expression: both hungry and nearly afraid.

“I want to hunt with you,” the inventor added, picking up the pace of his thrusts still further and licking at the fast-healing bruises on Loki’s throat, as though asking permission to re-darken them. “I want to _possess_ you. I want you _mine_ ,” he said, in a voice quite unlike his own.

Before any higher thought could interfere, leaving only chaotic intuition, irrational desire and blood-deep instincts, Loki gasped and heard himself choke out a strangled-sounding, “ _Yes, gods yes, please Tony-_ ” Then there were teeth at his throat again and everything went white for a long while, though he could still _feel_ , as his body writhed and shuddered, while his lover rode him through it, drawing out the peak of pleasure until it hovered the knife-edge between bliss and agony. When Anthony fell over the edge, it sent a tremor through the vampire’s awareness: bone-melting and perfect. Then there was only breathing, and trembling exhaustion pulling him back to awareness, his vision clearing.

As the Loki fell lazily back down to earth shaking a little, he could feel Anthony still breathing hard against his skin, recovering from his own climax, he thought vaguely, without any real concern, _I think my neck is bleeding a little_. His eyes shot open when he felt the wolf lick at the wound. “ _Anthony_ -”

The inventor shushed him mildly. “It’s harmless to me,” he said, voice soft. “I’ve torn apart some younger than you, once or twice. Given I had far longer teeth than now on both of those occasions, getting a taste was inevitable, really.”

Loki relaxed back into post-orgasm laziness with considerable relief. “Good.”

“You taste good, incidentally.” Anthony licked again, smirking at the shiver it earned him. “Spicy. And a bit like me.” He sounded rather pleased about that. _Mine_.

The vampire gave an amused hum. “Is this a common mating ritual?”

“A ritual would insinuate my kind have a culture. I don’t think many packs survived nearly long enough for that.”

“True.” He closed his eyes, feeling Anthony continue to lick at the wound until it closed. It was a new experience: someone warm and so feverishly alive doing that, without worry of afflicting them with anything inconveniently vampiric. “That said––I find you dangerously appealing, Tony.”

An amused huff. “It’s very strange, I’ll have you know, as a man of science and intellect, to feel every base instinct within me screaming ‘lay claim to him’ very loudly.”

Loki couldn’t help but smile at that, running a hand through the inventor’s hair, and settling his arm about the other man’s shoulders. “Oh good. So that’s two of us.”

“This is all very sudden, of course,” Anthony muttered.

“Oh yes. And over-hasty, no doubt.”

“Absolutely insane.”

“Irrational.”

“Foolishly optimistic.”

“And clearly as sign that we’re both of us doomed,” Loki concluded airily.

They were both grinning by then, trying hard not to laugh.

“This is such a bad idea,” Anthony sputtered, sniggering slightly.

Loki turned his head, speaking closer to his ear, “Well then, it’s a good thing that we both of us love bad ideas.”

“Oh, I _like_ you.”

“I can tell.” Loki squirmed slightly, his face flushing faintly again. “And feel.”

Anthony grinned, wolfish as he could while still in human shape, and let Loki roll them until it was the mad inventor on his back and the vampire on top, lowering himself back onto Anthony’s cock, sheathing him. “Damn, you feel good.”

“My turn, I think,” Loki purred.

“No complaints at _ah_ –– _hhhow_ the hell are you _doing_ that? _Ohgod!_ ”

“A great deal of experience, and very precise muscle control,” Loki responded, breath only a little uneven as he repeated the movement: a combination of flexing certain muscles and grinding his hips in a slow, tight circle.

The inventor made an utterly indecent sound, with only two syllables, which sounded suspiciously like “Lo” and “ki” respectively. He didn’t regain any form of verbal coherency for a long while after that.

 

~~

 

Armor reinforced to resist psychic influence was more than Anthony had frankly ever hoped for, before he’d joined forces with his rival hunter. It wasn’t much use, however, if they couldn’t find their prey. That was the main issue they had run into, in London. There were so many foxholes, so many mazes within mazes in different neighborhoods and between them: all naturally formed by centuries of human lives carving niches, and widening aimless and winding sorts of paths that had seemed to make sense at the time, hundreds of years ago. It was a fair reminder that London was not a single town that had sprawled outward prosperously until it merited being called a city, but rather a small cluster of villages and fiefdoms that had expanded as far as possible until they crashed into one another, then commenced shoving at each other ineffectually, only rarely budging or merging with one another with the historical equivalent of a cacophonous brawl.

Loki’s main limitations had been attributable to his nature, and the fact that the Ten Rings knew that they had provoked the ire of an elder vampire. They thus had sent several not-unskilled hunters in London attempting to track him, and had their main strongholds warded against his kind. Knowing as Loki did that the reward for catching his person alive was higher than the reward for his head on a spike, Loki had taken full advantage of his hunters’ avarice; three of them were dead as a result, and of the remaining four, two had fled the country, and one had not yet been freed from incarceration by the Ten Rings.

“If they’re even remotely intelligent, they won’t waste their time or funds on him,” Loki mused, “but one can always hope.”

“That still leaves the one,” Anthony pointed out.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s a double-agent in any case.”

“Wait. Who?”

 

~~

 

By contrast, Anthony had been limited less by the fact he was known, and more by the fact that he was not. He couldn’t don the face of a trusted member and just stroll into one of the Ten Rings’ local bases of operations the way that an elder vampire might with illusion or skilled shape-shifting rather beyond a lycanthrope’s abilities. Aside from being a bit recognizable in ways he’d rather not risk, despite how few members of London’s general populace connected Anthony Stark to his true famous-in-the-Americas self, he was no spy. He could wear authority like a cloak and look as though he had somewhere important to be, but without his armor, if things went awry, his chances of getting out alive and unrecognized were very slim. And the very last thing he needed was recognition, either for who he was, what he was, or both.

So how convenient, Anthony mused, for Loki to have found them a spy.

Furthermore, he’d found a _great_ spy.

She was dressed unobtrusively, in a plain black dress with a hat and veil that could conceal most of her face with the slightest strategic tilt of her head. Her rather noticeable auburn hair was twisted up and bound in dark cloth. She looked like a young widow who fully believed herself beneath notice, and so everyone else around her presumed much the same. Upon exiting the horse-drawn omnibus, she stepped out into the early dark tugging a little at her dark grey gloves of thin, surprisingly fine leather, adjusting the cuffs hidden under them, and her stingers thereupon.

“No need for that, Tasha,” Anthony said, as soon as the omnibus started away.

She did not jump, but turned her head sharply in the direction of his voice, eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing here you crass American bastard?”

Just over her left shoulder, Loki materialized in complete silence. “I might ask the same of you, little spider,” he said.

At that, the Black Widow went into motion almost too swiftly for the human eye to detect. She lashed out, which Loki dodged, though not without getting one of his sleeves scorches as he deflected a blow from her stingers. Before he could catch hold of her, she darted away to get a bit of distance between them. Loki let her. Breathing only a little faster, she raised an eyebrow at him and said, “You seemed brighter than this. Why on earth use Anthony Stark’s voice, of all voices, to distract me?”

“Because I happen to be in town,” Anthony said, straightening up where he leaned against a nearby corner, and stepping into view under the nearest streetlight. “How are you doing, Sweetheart?”

After sparing him only the briefest of glances, she fixed her attention firmly back on the vampire. “I know you’re an illusionist, but I have to hope even you aren’t this bizarrely inexplicable.” Looking back at the inventor, she glared. “You, however, are _always_ this bizarrely inexplicable. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here helping Banner. What are _you_ doing?” Anthony challenged.

Natasha relaxed a little. “I’m wondering how on earth this happened.” She gestured between the two men illustratively.

“We have a mutual interest,” Loki said simply. “I wasn’t aware it might be shared with you as well.”

“I have my own mission to contend with. Quit making a mess of it,” the spy shot back, narrowing her eyes at him. “We’ve had a good game of realistic-looking cat-and-mouse-and-cat going, but if anyone catches sight of this here-”

“Natasha, this is about to become a war zone,” the inventor said quietly.

She turned her sharp stare to him, then. “You mean you’re going to make it one.”

Anthony offered a wide and disconcerting smile.

“What we’re wondering, Miss Romanov,” Loki cut in, also beginning to smile, “is what it would take to bring our plans neatly into line with yours.”

With dawning interest and unwavering suspicion, Natasha looked from the sometimes-mercenary vampire, to the mad futurist inventor, back and forth, at least thrice. Her expression was cold and composed as ever, and she regarded them both with wary shrewdness. “I’m here to get information. What can you offer me?”

“Oh, we have plenty of that,” Loki said, grinning. “We just need someone inside who won’t raise any fuss, who might undermine some of their anti-vampire measures when the time comes.”

“And getting most silver ammunition out or reach, or replacing it with something else wouldn’t go amiss either, where some of our plans are concerned. We know they’ve started collecting interesting live specimens of lycanthropic, vampiric, and other inhuman sorts, and opening the cages is a good way to cause mass panic,” Anthony added. “From there, whoever desires information to compromise the Ten Rings might be interested in knowing when to move in, once we burn them to the ground.”

“If they’re another, similar criminal organization, we’ll wait until they’ve paid you before setting off any large incendiary devices or other parting gifts.” The vampire looked at Natasha a bit more thoughtfully. “I get the feeling, however, that they’re not.”

“You’re certain that you can really bring them down?”

“Most of their leaders are _very_ ambitious,” Anthony explained. “Without M keeping them in line through fear, they would be backstabbing each other left and right. Some of them are already doing so, thanks to us.”

“So that’s that’s been _both_ of you,” Natasha muttered. “Interesting.”

“Many will escape, and they will continue criminal enterprises elsewhere, but not on this scale, not with such resources. They will be cowering in the shadows again: scattered, incapable of trusting one another, unorganized,” Loki concluded, and offered a grin. “Even easier than toppling monarchies was in the first half of this century.”

“I’ll take you’re word for it,” Natasha mused. “You _are_ the expert.”

Loki bowed his head just slightly in acknowledgement. “I’ve noticed your work in the past, incidentally. You’re very good.”

The spy tucked a stray curl behind her ear, looking a little startled, but still flattered despite herself. “From you, that’s quite a compliment.”

Anthony cleared his throat quietly, shooting the lady assassin a warning look.

Eyebrows raised, Natasha folded her arms over her chest, her own expression clearly reading, _Oh_ really _, now?_ “Well, then, gentlemen: I propose we adjourn to somewhere quiet for a drink and some convivial sharing of collected intelligence.” She shot Loki a look. “Could you look a bit less recognizable, however? Let’s not give up the game so quickly, should we be spotted.”

“He’s got an attention-diverting bit of magic going,” Anthony said, waving a hand.

“There are many street-watchers in the Ten Rings’ employ specifically hired for their ability to see through magics,” Natasha said, narrowing her eyes a little. “How did you know he’s doing that?”

Anthony tapped a finger near the corner of one eye. “Not much of it left these days, but there’s still a bit of Sight in the family.”

“Now I’m just jealous.” She shot him a look that was nearly a pout.

Loki took a quick glance around the streets, his gaze not at all hindered by even the darkest shadows. _No watchers, no wards._ He took on the female form Anthony had seen before, dressed more unobtrusively, but still quite respectable, and lowered his attention-diverting spell. Loki then stepped between the inventor and the spy, settling on Anthony’s arm and offering her other to Natasha as though she were a dear sister. “Shall we be along, then?” The vampire smiled a little, watching Natasha’s expression turn amused as Anthony’s eyes wandered freely; Loki would have expected no less.

“You really wear that well,” the inventor muttered.

Natasha took Loki’s arm with a hint of a smile, and a deliberately sisterly rather than sensual air; she was aware Anthony had known her long enough to spot the difference. “This will either come to a horrible end, or a spectacular one, but either way I feel I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it, if I missed this upcoming show.”

 

~~

 

Bruce emerged from his laboratory smelling of chemicals and looking bone-weary, to find three insane persons poring over a few detailed map of London town, the Greater London area, and Surrey, all spread out on one of his tables. The trio were absorbed in low, speculative conversation. He raised an eyebrow upon recognizing the unexpected third party. “Miss Romanov? Have they shanghaied you into joining their latest scheme, then?”

All three of them looked up sharply, though Natasha broke out in a smile and stepped around the table to meet Bruce for a brief hug. “Bruce, it’s good to see you so well.” As she pulled back, she wrinkled her nose slightly. “However eye-watering. Dare I ask what you’re working on down there?”

“Just the usual.” Bruce shrugged. “You?”

“Oh,” she smiled small and self-deprecating. “The usual.”

“She’s been avoiding me!” Anthony accused.

“ _You_ have been avoiding _everyone_ ,” Natasha shot back playfully. “I’ve never known you were capable of being anything less than a flashy showman. I can’t believe you’ve been in town over a month and not been caught by the newspapers!”

The inventor shot her an exaggerated frown.

Bruce laughed at them both. “You’ve been working in similar circles as these two, I take it?”

“Well, officially I was hired by the Ten Rings to take care of a certain vampire problem.” She gestured toward Loki. “Had I known you were here, and they had started to come after you again, I would have pulled strings to make sure they more often tripped over themselves.”

The chemist shrugged with sad smile. “It’s safer for my friends and those I love, until this blows over, that I remain here and anonymous in a city where they dare not––provoke me too far.”

“I’m increasingly curious about that, incidentally,” Loki mused, in lofty tones.

The chemist and the spy shot him wary looks. Anthony merely watched Bruce, waiting for the other man’s gaze to drift over to him, seeking reassurance, at which point the inventor nodded calmly. _We can trust him_.

“I have a unique condition, caused by a regrettable accident during some of my laboratory work. I was part of a team working to re-create the serum which resulted in the creation of a national hero back in the Americas.”

“Ah,” Loki murmured. “The Captain?”

Bruce nodded. “We found an unusual, exotic form of energy, created by nuclear decay. I thought it might be the key to the serum, but was very sorely mistaken.” He glanced at Anthony again. “As a result, I have something of a split personality.”

“The papers back home referred to his other half as Green Hyde, as his first appearance was only a year after the story of _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ reached our shores,” Anthony concluded quietly. He shot his old friend an amused look. “Dr. Bruce Banner: the only man whose internal struggles make lycanthropy look like a holiday.” A pause. “By the by, Natasha, over the years you’ve known me, I’ve been a werewolf the whole time. Cheers.” He raised his half-empty glass of scotch, then drained it.

The spy looked genuinely startled. “You what?!”

“He has a remarkable degree of control, actually,” Loki murmured. “If my own theories aren’t mistaken, that may in some small part be thanks to his lineage, too.”

“I thought you said most of the older Roman lines tended to be more stable?”

Loki shot him a serious look. “The ones who survived the first few years, yes. No beginnings are easy. Some fevers set in quicker, some lines age and others do not, some become stronger with time while others burn out quickly and grow ill: those factors are blood. The rest still depends eighty-percent upon the person.”

“You’ve known a number of lycanthropes?” Natasha’s disbelief was clear.

“I have lived a _very_ long time, as you well know, Miss Romanov, during which I have met all manners of men, women, and monsters. After my own transformation, imagine my surprise over a century later, meeting the woman who had been my wife, running with a pack of _Lupi Romana_.” He shot the spy a pointed look. “Not all forms of lycanthropy were considered illness before Christianity began condemning and eradicating all that was not purely human.”

“Yes they were,” Anthony said flatly.

“By law, and in medical terms, they were considered so by the Greeks and Romans, but not all of their neighbors. Even law and science’s combined condemnation didn’t stop the emperor banning the use of silver for any and all soldiers’ weaponry around the city of Rome herself,” Loki said, talking now while his fingertips traced invisible paths along the map on the table, not looking up from the maps. “The wolves there administered their own self-government, keeping outsiders––other bloodlines––out, for their own sake as much as anyone else’s, primarily because madness catches on like a wildfire. And if one or two attempts to invade Rome were dissolved by sheer panic as the invaders were beset by a legion of wolves protecting their territory, the civilian populace hardly complained. I found it familiar, really. Some tribes further north had a similar policy, though the packs there are––or were––much wilder, though not in the sense of instability or insanity. They simply kept to themselves, hidden from all but a few men of their choosing, with whom they would occasionally broker deals of protection, particularly when food was scarce for a few seasons and tensions heightened. Most of the actual berzerker-rage amongst lycanthropes came from a few isolated packs formed in Gaul after the Crusades (I suppose it wasn’t still called Gaul, then; do pardon me, things blur after a few centuries) which were mad enough to bite far more than most and run far and wide while doing so, spreading their corrupt affliction with uncanny speed and efficiency throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. There were some breathtakingly bold and vicious blood-curses involved there, from non-christian mages, with very good reason. The madness caused many particularly monstrous crusaders, hailed as saints and heroes upon their return home, to inflict horrors upon their own almost on par with the horrors they committed in the name of their god against men, women and children alike in their so-called Holy Land. The madness was either strong enough to somehow affect the vampiric population as well, or they were merely caught up in the mass hysteria: reports vary. I wasn’t on the European continent at the time, but I’ve met a few survivors of all the burnings. I lost a few very old friends to those fires,” he concluded, low and thoughtful. Then he looked up from the map, realizing that the room had gone very quiet aside from his own voice. “Sorry. I occasionally ramble. I blame old age; after the first two millennia, this terrible impulse for giving pedantic speeches about old dead history sets in.”

Natasha waved off the apology, looking a bit stunned. “No need. I had no idea––and I’m sorry, Anthony. I’ve trusted you this far; it would be stupid to change that now. Even lacking unexpected historical insights.”

The inventor smiled faintly. “I figured you’d come around. You’re only practical.”

She snorted at him, strolling back over to punch his arm in a manner that could only be classified as slightly vicious sisterly affection.

Anthony didn’t pretend to wince this time, as he’d done before when he knew responding like a normal human was in his best interest. He grinned down at her.

She shook her head and looked back down at the map.

“It’s actually rather fascinating,” Bruce said, coming to join them in standing around the table. “I’d like to hear more, sometime. I’ve studied lycanthropy from a scientific standpoint over the past ten years, among other transformative––well _afflictions_ may be the wrong word, I suppose.”

“Any vampirism?” Loki offered him a small smile.

“Not much. Very few volunteers.” He smiled a bit when Anthony gave an amused snort at that.

“I may consider, Dr. Banner. I certainly have a great deal of history and practical examples to offer for consideration.”

“I need to get more history lessons from you,” Anthony said flatly. “I’ve decided.”

“Where are you actually from, Loki?” Natasha inquired. She had considered calling him by his surname, but knew too many of his aliases to bother, and decided to go with the most consistent name in his repertoire. “There are records I can connect you to going back many years, but they mention you being over a thousand years old even in those resources.”

“Journals from Florence?”

“How did you know?”

“I saved them from a fire, and put them somewhere I hoped would be safe. I’m glad it’s proven successful so far.” Loki shrugged a little. “By blood, I’m Scandinavian (roughly speaking) but culturally I would consider Alexandria my true home.”

“How did you go from Scandinavia to Egypt?” Bruce asked, genuinely surprised.

“My people were from the general region that the Romans eventually named _Scandia_ , though I was parted from my family relatively young during a raid and was sold by the victorious party, who turned around and sold me for a still higher price to another merchant and then another, the last of whom I escaped before reaching a Greek market. Narrow escapes and recapture became something of a pattern after that, until I was simply in the habit of running even months after the chase had stopped. As a result, one rather chaotic and improbable year later I was roughly fourteen years old and learning to read in Alexandria, because by then my _Gifts_ as a mage had manifested and I was thus suddenly a valuable resource to be groomed and educated.” He smiled sadly. “That was only six years before the library burned down, of course.”

“You _lucky_ son of a bitch,” Anthony said sharply.

“Oh _yes_.”

“Did you save anything?” Bruce asked. “Secreted away anywhere?”

Loki shook his head. “No one anticipated that fire, not even the men who started it. I was still human, then, and less reckless than I’d been before.” His expression sobered a little. “By then, I had a family again, for a time.”

Bruce nodded thoughtfully, understanding, but not pitying. “I see.” Then he looked down at the map and jerked in surprise. “Is the ink on that Greater London map actually _moving_?”

“Yes. I may have nicked this map from your guest, Dr. Strange.” Loki glanced up at Bruce quickly. “I do apologize. After we’re done planning, I’ll happily leave it in your custody, so you may return it to him.”

“Is it––it shows people.”

“Not recognizably, as I’m not mage enough any longer to access its full potential, but yes, it’s a real-time reflection of the city itself and the movements of people therein.” He stared at it for a few moments. “I will never admit as much to him, but Strange really is a masterful spell-caster. This map is a true work of art: just _beautifully_ constructed.” He traced fingers along the edge, not quite touching, though he could clearly see or feel something there.

Anthony could see a flicker of threads in the air where Loki touched them, lighting them up for a moment as his own powers––not quite the magic of a mage, but tricky and adaptable as its master could make it––brushed over them, as absent-mindedly reverent as a violinist’s fingers making a cursory examination of someone else’s Stradivarius. To most mages, particularly more powerful ones, magic was like music to them, and seemed as necessary as air. They lived and breathed it, moved with it, and pulling its strings was as rich a sensation as drawing music from an instrument, except that the instrument was simply themselves: body and mind, and the powers they guided could be woven into spells as complex as symphonies. Powerful mages were as rare as awe-inspiring violinists, and always had been, though other forms of the Gift remained more common; that much was a fact of life, and of history. Looking at Loki, whose attention had been raptly fixed on the map ninety percent of the time, from the moment he had unrolled it for them twenty minutes before, it occurred Anthony just how deeply that loss must have struck.

“So,” Bruce asked. “What are you planning, and can I help at all?”

The other three all looked up, a bit surprised.

“You mean to end all this, and destroy the Ten Rings,” Bruce said simply. “I’m not inclined to simply hide here and wait.” His eyes flickered green briefly. “Certainly not while all of you get to have all of the fun. The Avengers never really disbanded, after all, and I never took myself off of the roster. We only drifted.”

“Avengers?” Loki sounded puzzled.

“The Captain came up with it,” Natasha said. “We all teamed up once, to stop a mad would-be demi-god from bringing in an invading force from another world and possibly taking over the whole of the universe with some glowing cube-shaped artifact.”

“Thanos,” Anthony supplied. “Not a pleasant fellow.”

“I think I heard something about that. I presumed it was Americans being their usual creatively insane selves,” Loki mused. “It seemed difficult to believe.”

“Well, I suppose beings from another world might be difficult for you to believe. After all, you did spend most of your life living amongst cultures who thought the sun revolved around the earth,” Bruce suggested, surprising a brief fit of laughter from the vampire, who had been caught rather off-guard.

Recovering after a few moments, wiping at one eye, Loki conceded, “That––that is shamefully true. Thank you, Dr. Banner.”

The chemist smiled a little. “So. May I join in?”

“Absolutely,” Anthony said, at the same time Natasha and Loki said “Yes.”

 

~~

 

Using the information she herself had been collecting, as well as the freshest data from Loki and Anthony, Natasha was able to infiltrate a few strongholds and work out that a warehouse district in one of the least population-dense regions of Surrey, just outside the Greater London area, was where M would be in three nights’ time.

Accordingly, they developed a cunning plan.

Three nights later, Natasha made her way into the base of operations below a few warehouses on the southeast end of the district, accompanied by two men who appeared to be having some difficulty carrying a very large coffin wrapped both in chains, and swathes of cloth covered in spells of binding and containment for vampiric sorts––at least, the spells looked similar enough to such things as would make no odds, thanks to Loki, who had seemed very amused as he’d scorched delicate lines of magic all over the long strips of linen.

The coffin itself was an uncommon shade of rust, as though it had been sanded, heavily bloodstained, and then varnished, which it had. Loki’s explanation for this had been that vampiric blood in such large quantities could convince most vampire-detecting spells into believing that the person or object inside such a container was indeed a vampire. _Trust me, this has saved my life at least four times before now_ , he’d insisted.

They had believed him, and rightly so.

“If M still desires this cargo to be delivered alive,” she insisted, “you had best lower a few of your vampire-targeting wards. I won’t have my payments cut because of clumsy magics toasting my captive.”

“Mate,” one of her coffin-carrying brutes said, in slightly strained tones, “do us a favor and hurry up? This elder bastard’s a heavy son of bitch.” His eyes glittered dark green from under the cap he wore, though the rest of him, from his average height, to his forgettable features and dull clothing, was utterly unremarkable.

“I’ll second that,” Bruce said, from where he upheld the other end of the coffin. His features were not quite as they appeared before, thanks in part to a bit of his own chemistry, and in part to Anthony’s skill at putting together subtle forms of disguise.

Accordingly, two men from the group guarding the entrance hurried across the the main chamber and down one of the dozen or so tunnels that branched off from it. The main chamber was a bit like a city square, people moving goods in and out on large carts. No horses: all manpower, which meant the smell of the place was tolerable. After five minutes without relief, Bruce and the well-disguised Loki set down the coffin and made a show of trying to catch their breath, just as, from within the coffin, loud and erratic sounds emerged, as of something trying to claw its way out. The noises clearly unnerved most passerby, as did the sight of the coffin itself. Panicked whispers had already begun to spread through the crowd over the next several minutes.

It was difficult for the elder vampire to prevent himself smirking, but he managed to cope. “I hadn’t realized quite how effectively rumors of our work have spread of recent. How marvelous,” he muttered.

“They mostly blame you, given how well Anthony covered his tracks,” Natasha clarified, very quietly, “except in cases where something our friend got up to occurred at the same time, in a different location, as one of yours, which has indeed happened several times. The pair of you must think in frightfully similar ways.

“Indeed we do.” Loki’s eyes narrowed and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He exhaled a breath of relief and whispered, “Ah, their wards are down.” He didn’t visibly smile, but there was still a distinct amount of vicious glee in his voice and his eyes positively glittered with mirthful ill-intent.

Three men and one woman, all distinctly better dressed than the lower-ranking criminals in the base, approached them through the bustle of human traffic through the main corridor the trio had entered. They were all in black, and to Loki’s senses one of them had the distinctly more-than-solid presence of a mage. He and Bruce stepped back from the coffin to stand respectfully behind Miss Romanov, who crossed her arms over her chest.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted, with a nod, “and Lady,” she smiled a bit at the woman, who smiled back a bit more warmly. “I come with glad tidings.” She gestured toward the coffin. “Here you have Loki the Elder, bound and prepared for whatever you might have in mind for him.”

The mage, a man younger than the two male guards and the lovely lady Death-strike who accompanied him, knelt to examine the coffin. “Where did you get these binding spells from?”

“A magician of my long acquaintance, who has no love of this vampire,” Natasha said simply. “You need know no more than that.”

He nodded, squinting a bit at them and frowning.

Loki glanced away, concealing his amusement further. He’d deliberately use the oldest and most obscure spells in his considerable repertoire, based on Sumerian magics that had been ancient even before he’d lost his humanity. Few enough mages could identify them these days, let alone one so young as this; they got quite lucky.

The young mage traced a few of the lines with a finger, then retracted his hand quickly, as though stung. “They’re powerful, certainly. I’d like to study them more closely at some point.” He then focused on the coffin itself, murmuring a basic identification spell. “Oh, yes, this is an elder indeed. So much power soaked into this box, so much serious potential. Do you know, Black Widow, that they say this one used to be a mage, before he was turned.”

“I did my research,” Natasha said curtly. “Now let’s see to my payment.”

The mage nodded. “We’ll need to put the box in secure containment, of course, so we can observe your captive’s face and properly identify him in particular.”

Natasha’s expression darkened and she gave an audible huff of impatience and irritation. “Then let’s pursue that.”

The mage’s two guards picked up the coffin.

“You can leave your pair of brutes here,” Lady Death-strike said, with a thin smile. “They have not your clearance, you understand.”

Natasha nodded, turned to the two boys and said something sharply to them in very clipped Russian, then stepped away to follow the high-ranking members of the Ten Rings.

“What did she say?” Bruce muttered.

“Something about keeping out of trouble. Now, let us see...” Loki scanned the room for the umpteenth time. He guided Bruce around covered carts and the men dragging them, the both of them slouching a bit, hands in their pockets as they looked about with apparent boredom. “From what I’ve seen, this main chamber here was from a pre-existing cavern, if you take a close look. A few of the larger tunnels branching off from it are from the same cave system and connect to one or two other nearby bases, while others were carved out more manually. The high-ranking officials who sought out Natasha arrived from that tunnel, and departed to that one to the northeast, which doubtlessly leads to some secure cells with a great deal of wards, a great deal of volatile weaponry and other equipment, and a few even more volatile captives rather less lucky and clever than myself, captured for the Ten Rings to experiment upon and potentially make use of in the creation of more exotic varieties of mercenary to be sold off to the highest bidders. Given they keep such creatures there, it’s also where they likely keep most of the specialized ammunition and weaponry for _subduing_ them, which we need to make sure they lack access to.” He shot Bruce a grin. “That’s where you come in.”

“You’re certain you can find this M yourself?”

“Quite.” His eyes narrowed a little. “I’ve already got his scent, in fact. I’ve not come this close to getting my claws into him since Constantinople.”

“Good. Be careful, though; my dear friend seems to have grown very attached to you, very quickly,” Bruce said, shooting him a pointed look.

“And I him,” Loki said, low and very sincere. “I’m a very selfish creature, doctor. Rest assured, I have no intention to let go of him just yet, and that plan distinctly involves not getting myself killed again.”

“Again?”

“Well. Permanently, this time, in any case: that’s to be avoided.”

Bruce shook his head. “Just be careful, he reiterated, and began to casually stroll alongside a large cart that was headed for a tunnel to the right of the one Natasha and her trio of Ten Rings members had vanished down. The card was moving a bit slow, and Bruce was easily able to sidle up alongside it and add his hands to those slightly burlier ones already moving it along.

Loki watched him for only a brief moment, then wandered away, whistling, toward the doors those three officials had emerged from, whistling a jaunty tune as he went. Not long after, he vanished amidst the human traffic as though he’d never been.

Ten minutes later almost exactly, all hell broke loose, starting with an inhuman-sounding roar of rage from near the northeast section of the complex, and the sounds of stones being shaken as though by an earthquake. A sound like an explosion followed as the monster oft-called Green Hyde burst through the narrowest section of rock wall between the tunnel he had gone down, and the one the coffin had been taken through.

His roar echoed even louder in there, and was answered by several others, even further inhuman and eerie in their own ways.

It was at that point that the mage and his guards noticed Natasha Romanov and their own Lady Death-strike were both conspicuously absent all of a sudden, and it occurred to them to wonder when exactly that’d happened. A loud crack sounded from the coffin. They looked down in time to see a masterfully crafted metal gauntlet, palm aglow and aimed their way, just before it blasted them into the nearest adjacent wall, knocking them unconscious.

With a bit further effort, Anthony broke open the coffin lid enough to slip out of it and begin scanning the corridor. He couldn’t help but grin at the sight of his old friend, now only a bit more _overtly_ angry than his usual. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Green Hyde, twice Anthony’s height and easily more than four times his width just across the shoulders, lumbered a bit closer. “Metal man,” he rumbled. “You recall the doctor’s plan?”

“Oh yeah. Clear as day.” Outside the suit of armor he wore, his voice had a slightly more metallic, rattling quality. “Loki mention if he caught M’s scent at least? If he hasn’t, I have.”

“He did.”

“Good then. All according to schedule, then. I’ll leave you to your established favorite pastime of breaking goddamn everything.”

Green Hyde smiled, wide and full of teeth. “Goood.”

Anthony saluted him, suit beginning to hover, then took off down the hall with a roaring sound of crackling energy.

 

~~

 

On the opposite end of the compound, the mastermind of all the carefully-managed mayhem that was the Ten Rings, glanced up from a thoughtful contemplation of his rings that was, in fact, his way of conducting a quick psychic survey of several of his lieutenants he considered compromised insofar as their loyalties.

When the roar sounded again, followed by the explosive cacophony of wall-breaking that should have collapsed one or both tunnels––or would have, if the slightly-mad doctor at the heart of that particular monster has been any less brilliant––M raised an eyebrow, taking on an irritated expression. “Of all the tricks I might have expected of the doctor and the vampire, the two of you working jointly was admittedly never among them.” Guards burst in through his door, not at all unexpectedly.

“Mr. M, sir, we’ve been compromised,” the first said, looking very drawn and pale. “Some sort of _monster_ the likes of which-”

“I’m aware, Mr. Davidson,” M said, turning to face him. M himself, the man, was handsome in a sage sort of way, with dark eyes and an olive complexion, and features that had such a beneficial mixture of bloodlines responsible for them, that he could pass as nearly any race on earth he might care to, with either the most paltry of illusions, or application of some subtle alteration to his coloring by make-up and the like. “We have a certain Hyde in our base. Start evacuation, if you haven’t already. My guess is that the vampire is already out of his box.

“We’ve sealed off the-” Davidson started, then cut off as there was a sound of another explosive impact, more directed and metallic this time, echoing down the corridor behind him. “Oh. Well. From the sound of it, that might be less well-sealed than anticipated, sir.”

“Do what you can to raise those wards again, Davidson,” M said sharply. The other man saluted briefly, and ran back down the corridor. M then turned to the other guard and barked, “Mr. Aldwood, find out if that vampire took out our young mage if possible.”

“I sincerely doubt that he has,” the guard said, in deceptively obedient tones.

M’s eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

Aldwood nodded sharply. “Yes, sir, Mr. M.”

“Why is that?” M’s rings concealed behind the table, began to glow.

“He was never in the box,” Aldwood said, and then vanished.

M swore and turned, sending out a blast of light that filled the whole of the room: an exact mimic of true sunlight. By rights, the vampire should have been screaming, but notably was not. M hesitated, already prepared to launch another attack.

“Shadows are tricky things, you know, M,” said a snarling, too-familiar voice from just below the cloth-covered table that M’s maps, papers, and inks resided upon. A moment later, the table itself launched at the criminal mastermind, who couldn’t block it in time, though not long after it slammed him into the wall with a satisfying crash, it was sent flying back toward the elder vampire with twice the force, courtesy of an Impact Beam from M’s right index finger. He followed it with a blast intended to disintegrate the table and the vampire it appeared to strike. The table vanished.

“Oh, tisk, tisk, M. You can only use that one every twenty minutes, as I recall. Pity you wasted that one on an illusion,” Loki’s voice jeered, seeming to come from everywhere, and nowhere, all at once.

“You know you can’t defeat me on your own regardless, Loki,” M called back. “You really should consider the employment opportunity I’ve offered you.”

“That’s sweet of you,” the vampire replied, “but I’ve not outlived Julius Caesar by so many centuries by being fool enough to believe you’d employ someone you can’t _control_ without first breaking them.”

M shook his head, glancing about, trying in vain to pick up either visual, or psychic confirmation of the mad elder’s position. “It’s tragic to see such brilliance so wasted, and so aimless, stumbling down through the ages of men without any sense of purpose.” The room began to darken, the shadows taking form as the ring on his right-hand little finger began to give off an eerie dark-violet light. He could feel, then, where the vampire clung to one corner of the ceiling. “Got you.”

Loki snarled, leaping away with considerable effort as the dark pulled at him. A burst of emerald flame barely loosened its grip enough for him to get free of the walls. He landed silent as a ghost behind M, who turned and leveled the white light ring at him. The vampire froze, then smiled brightly.

M’s eyes narrowed. “What are you smiling about?”

“I’m not alone.”

“The beast Hyde sounds very busy, and too far away to help you.”

Fingers tracing faint shapes on the rug before his feet, Loki began to laugh.

“You’re more fool than I thought,” M said flatly. “Perhaps you’re not so great a loss to us as I might have thought.” He began to summon the power necessary for a quick blast of light, not enough to burn him up fully, but enough to melt even a powerful elder’s face with its intensity, but the dark he’d controlled moments before coiled protectively, of its own accord, around the vampire, who vanished into it as though it were solid. M hesitated.

“I’d wondered before, precisely what _that_ ring of yours did,” Loki called, his voice again seemingly coming from every direction. Shadows writhed along the walls, outward from the corners until there was only a dim sphere of light from the gas lamp hanging from the wall nearest to M, who found himself backing toward it slowly. The elder vampire laughed. “How interesting, that this energy you’ve summoned feels so strangely familiar. It’s rather comforting, once a bit of control can be established over it, and it really seems to _like_ me. I think it must be from a place similar to where some of the oldest vampires came from. You did know my earliest recorded kin weren’t originally, as it were, ‘earthly’ didn’t you? Well, I suppose it’s not so well-known after so many other elders were caught up in those _nasty_ post-Crusade fires.”

M tried to use Black-Light ring again, but found the forces it usually called so easily to be strangely resistant. He began to realize he might have made a mistake, until a thought occurred to him. “It’s not truly shadow, I know, but it’s close kin, in its way,” he said, and set the room on fire with a sudden burst of flame, and created a windy vortex with himself at its heart, whipping the flames into a frenzy as his feet left the ground. At the heart of the whirlwind, the flames couldn’t touch him, but they seemed to have profound effects on the rest of the room.

Loki gave a shout of alarm as the shadowy protections were worn away, pulled at inexorably by M’s power while being assaulted and damaged by the fire. He had already taken precautions to cover himself in fire-proofing spells, but with the friendly darkforce energies regrettably abated, he was left otherwise all too exposed.

M grinned down at him, and gestured sharply, the ring on his right thumb emitting dazzling glow. As soon as Loki’s form appeared through the fast-fading darkness and the heat of the fire, the stone underfoot and forming the frame of the subterranean space distorted into the shape of a fist suddenly, clasping about the vampire tight and unyielding. Loki gave a loud snarl and struggled, only to be left breathless as the unforgiving stone began to squeeze with enough force to make his ribcage creak.

Still carried by the vortex of his own making, which now seemed to be doing away with the flames rather than encouraging them, M hovered to stand near the elder vampire, examining him closely. “You really are a fine specimen of your kind. It’s such a pity you insist on being so impudent.”

“I find it a pity that you’re so predictable,” Loki rasped, with some of the last air in his lungs. He then gave another involuntary, croaking and pained exhale as the stone squeezed still tighter.

M held out one of his hand expectantly over his right shoulder, and from the charred remains of the table left in the corner, the wind carried a broken-off splinter two-inches thick at its widest point, and long as his forearm. “I suppose I shall just have to go back to hunting down your possible fledgelings. I’ve heard interesting word from the continent, suggesting your youngest and only _confirmed_ kin survived our last little skirmish with her.”

Loki’s expression darkened still further. “You will not make it out of this place alive, _Gene_ ,” he said, enjoying the way M’s face fell at the sound of his birth-name. The vampire’s teeth appeared very white and sharp as he spoke, his eyes so dark they almost ceased to look green anymore, the sclera shadowed with grey. “Even if it takes my last breath and the last flickering spark of my life, I will paint walls with your blood before I let you leave this place. If I can not, there are others.” His grin became very unpleasant.

As the crackle of flames died down, there was increasingly audible clamor in the tunnel outside the now-wrecked chamber they occupied, and M’s eyes narrowed. “You brought another ally, then. Interesting. How novel it must be for you––unless you plan to kill them like your few other past business partners.”

Loki only grinned, until M gestured again with the Matter-Rearranging ring, and swept the stone floor up like a tidal wave to block the door with solid stone almost a foot thick. His expression remained very sobered as the mastermind regarded him all the more shrewdly.

“Who else could you have possibly found mad enough to follow you to their deaths in this place?” M bit out.

“Oh, he’s so gloriously mad, I can hardly begin to describe it,” Loki mused, his tone light and airy despite his grim expression. “He’s at _least_ as insane as I am, marvelously so, and does want to destroy your empire almost as much as I do.”

A loud, thundering boom sounded from the other side of the wall of stone M had assembled before the door. Cracks appeared, and pieces of it fell away.

M glanced at it in open shock just before the next blow sent shards of rock shrapnel flying towards him with impressive force. With a shout, he summoned more wind, forceful enough to send some fallen bits of stone rattling away across the floor. He lifted his head to see a vaguely familiar armored body standing unaffected by the winds, leveling one glowing gauntlet at him. Then the blast went off and M found himself flung out of the center of the aerial vortex, and crashed against the far wall.

“Good evening, M, how’s tricks?” Anthony called.

“You’re late,” Loki said, in a slightly strained deadpan.

“Sorry about that. Natasha isn’t the only assassin around, and a few of them are old chums, you could say. Or were. They’re now reduced to ugly smears on a few stone tunnel walls.”

“I knew I liked you,” the vampire shot back.

Then, however, the stone under Anthony’s feet began to revolt, and he had to blast ceiling-ward with enough haste he didn’t halt there so much as crash into it a bit more gently than usual, then hover in place once there. “This shit again, M? Seriously with the rocks?”

“It’s effective, you’ll note.”

“Ceiling is rock too,” Loki pointed out.

“Noticed that,” Tony said sharply, already dodging, shooting off blasts in M’s direction, landing few hits, but at least keeping him distracted. “I take it you can’t get out of there? No teleportation?”

“I’d bring the rock with me, its in close, uncomfortably personal contact with most of my abdomen and the upper half of my legs, and as you’ll note, I haven’t a hand free.”

“You’ve afflicted an elder vampire with your own inability to remain quiet for any length of time, Mr. Stark? I would be impressed if I still thought this one had any taste.”

“You’re shaven bald and wearing clothes that were out of fashion four years ago, you unutterably dull little man,” Loki shot back. “If I’m not to _your_ taste, I’ll frankly consider it a great compliment.” A section of the stone around his body moved, forming a long, spiked shape on the end of a curved arm-like extension, aiming the sharp, very solid spiked tip so that it lightly prodded the left side of Loki’s chest threateningly. Loki swallowed tightly, lips thinning.

Anthony hesitated visibly, and was hit by a powerful impact beam as a result, sending him flying back against a wall, from which he fell to the floor.

M strode to the middle of the room, then, still holding up his right hand, thumb aglow with power. “Just how much value does your current ally hold to you, I wonder? You’re the still-honorable man of the trio, I’ve no doubt. You’re the _hero_ , Mr. Stark. Are you the sort of hero who wouldn’t care if I disposed of this monster, or are you just fond enough of him, and loyal enough, you’ll make the wiser choice of surrendering now?”

“Don’t. Surrender,” Loki said firmly, loud as he could considering the state of his lungs and increasingly bruised ribs.

Anthony slowly rose to his feet, eying M warily. “Don’t be an idiot, M. Up until now, I was even considering trying to persuade him to let you live to watch your empire burn to the ground.”

“If you surrender now, he might survive the next two minutes, Mr. Stark.”

The inventor swallowed tightly.

“Anthony, please trust me,” Loki said, quiet enough human ears wouldn’t quite catch it. “ _Trust me._ ”

Anthony shot him a look.

Loki met his stare through the mask with a desperate look, and shook his head. “Just kill him,” he hissed.

Turning his gaze on M again, Anthony slowly raised his hands in apparent surrender, and took two steps forward.

“Stop there,” M said sharply.

He stopped, but said, low and dangerous, “I’m giving you one more chance to release him.”

“You have nothing left to bargain with, Anthony Stark. You cannot win.” His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Even if I can’t get into your head to convince you, this time. Nice modifications to your armor: I hadn’t time to notice them properly before. Oh, dear, our little vampire must _like_ you.”

“Release him, M,” Anthony said, calm and focused.

“Surrender, Mr. Stark,” M snapped sharply.

Hands still raised in apparent surrender, Anthony shut his eyes and set off the now well-charged uni-beam from the reactor in his chest plate. Even through his eyelids, the flash was nearly blinding. He heard a shout from M, the rattle and crack of rebellious stone, and beyond that a single sharp, pained sound from Loki’s direction, quieter amidst the din, that chilled him to the bone. He knew if he looked, and saw what he knew he would upon looking at Loki, he wouldn’t be able to finish this. When his eyes snapped open, he stubbornly kept them focused on M, blasting him again and again, rapid-fire, getting closer, not letting him get back into the air, or even quite to his feet again.

M couldn’t get his breath back, black spots danced across his vision, and blood dripped from a wound on the back of his head. He was dizzied, and just unfocused enough he couldn’t quite keep the Iron Man at bay for long. In a last-ditch effort he tried ice, covering that armor in an inch-thick, hard layer of it, and anchoring the other man’s legs from the calves down in still-thicker ice. M slumped back against the wall and stared, watching the machine struggle against the ice, most of it cracking away save for his legs. M pulled himself back to his feet slowly. “Has it been about twenty minutes, do you think, since your little siege began?”

“Not quite. Not since we got the signal anyway,” Anthony shot back.

“Your vampire is dead.”

Anthony stood still a moment, then reached down to the two disc-like shapes on his armor, just above the knees, on either side. He bristled, rage rising to the surface along with something still darker, now bloodthirsty too. _Loki: ours,_ the dark hissed. _Make him pay._ He twisted those disc-like sections at the same time that he set off the repulsors in his boots, and the ice gave way, though it shorted out those two repulsors. Slowly, the inventor straightened. There was still a distance of twelve feet between them, and he’d just lost his ability to fly.

M hadn’t, and the wind was picking up again. The stone ceiling above them was making disconcerting sounds, like it was about to open up and let him out. “Goodbye, Mr. Stark.” He then raised an eyebrow, hesitating as Iron Man’s armor seemed to fold open, outward, then back, but into a more compact shape resting loosely about his shoulders, not-quite-fitted there. The shape of it was quite strange. “My god. Is this actually your surrender?”  
Anthony smiled thinly, coldly. It didn’t reach his eyes. “No.” His eyes flicked to yellow and it only took him a few seconds––the full moon had been just the past night, after all––to complete the change and launch himself at the shell-shocked crime lord before M could overcome shock and take to the air, or do much of anything at all. Anthony the wolf was very, very _fast_.

The last thing M saw before he died was an incomprehensible blur of fur and teeth. He screamed, right until his head came off and all of the power and life-force drained from him. Blood coating his muzzle and trickling down his front, the oversized wolf hardly spared the body a glance, too busy dodging chunks of falling stone as M’s force of will ceased to support their improbably new formations, and most of them crumbled into rubble. As soon as the dust settled, the canid shape with sleek-fitting metal armor along the back of his neck, across his chest and loosely about his abdomen, darted over the rocks to the largest, most distinct of the now-broken rock formations, paws scrambling at loose rock until he found Loki underneath and gave a low whine pawing at him gently, then jumped, startled, at the sound of a dull, wet cough, rather than the expected complete lack of life.

Loki’s mostly-exposed shoulder and neck flexed slowly and he gave a hiss as he tried and failed to free his right arm. He was clearly in a great deal of pain. “Help me, would you?” he rasped, even quieter than before, the blood in his lungs very audible.

Anthony went back to frantic unburial without hesitation, his claws scratching away small-to-medium sized rocks, large paws forcefully pushing aside larger ones as though they weighed nothing. He kept at it until Loki managed to push himself mostly upright, only his legs still partially-buried. He glanced up and met the wolf’s gaze. _Huge_ , was his first thought. _Beautiful_ was his second, followed shortly by, _Ow, this really fucking hurts_. “Hello, darling. Sorry about that.”

The wolf’s eyes narrowed with a low growl, though he then pressed close against Loki’s right side bodily under his arm, nuzzling his forehead against the vampire’s neck, one large forelimb lightly gripping his waist.

Loki rested his arm loosely about the wolf’s neck, leaning on him for support for a few moments as he tried to regather his strength. He rested his chin on Anthony’s head and scratched absently at his neck, through the rough black-brown fur. “I was wondering when I’d get to see you like this. You kept out of sight last night, you shy bastard.”

Anthony gave a noncommittal rumbling sound.

“I think you’ll want to change back, however, in order to shout at me. I’m sure you have shouting you want to do.”

The wolf gave a huff that sounded distinctly both irritable and almost-amused, and stepped back from him rolling his shoulders and twisting slightly in a way that seemed to cue the armor about him to move. As he changed, the armor wrapped around his more human form again. He flicked the faceplate up and grimaced slightly as he pulled off his helmet. “That’s _incredibly_ uncomfortable after all the clothing under the suit gets torn to shreds, just let me tell you.”

Loki took on a thoughtful expression, muttered something and gestured experimentally with his right hand, still not quite willing to move his left, given there was still a respectable chunk of stone sticking out of his chest on the left side.

Anthony made a face, his eyes still slightly feral-gold around the edges. “Okay, you removing my clothes is fine, but the fact you can apply them, without me removing the armor, is somehow disturbing. Also a very disconcerting sensation.” He then got another good look at his lover with more human eyes and paled. “Not that I’m not extremely happy that you’re still apparently moving, breathing, that sort of thing, but shouldn’t that have all sort of...” He trailed off, stepping to Loki’s left and kneeling to get a better look. “Jesus, Loki.”

“Allow me to let you in on a secret, Tony,” Loki rasped, with a small self-deprecating smile. “Can you pull this out first, though, it hurts even more than it looks like, I assure you. Once it’s out, the tissues around it will actually start to heal.”

The inventor gripped the exposed section of rock, gauntlets tightening until even the impressive blood coating wouldn’t let his grip slip. “When you’re ready,” he said softly. “Give me the word.”

Loki nodded, squeezing his eyes shut and exhaling as much as possible. “Now.”

Anthony shut his eyes and pulled, grimacing at the resulting deeply-unpleasant sound of oddly crunchy suction, and an even more nauseating noise when the pressure released. Loki himself managed not to scream, but a noise escaped him anyway, and it was full of blood. At times, advanced hearing had some major downsides, the inventor reflected. His eyes snapped open then and he soon regretted it, seeing the hole in Loki’s chest, and the splintered bone making a mess around its edges, until he noticed something a bit odd just beneath that. “Uh... isn’t your heart supposed to be there?”

The vampire nodded, and then lost the ability to keep himself upright, eyes rolling back and falling shut as he very nearly passed out.

Catching him, Anthony pulled him close, holding him upright, and pushed more of the rocks off of his legs so he could pull him free of the rubble entirely. “Stay with me,” he said softly. “Loki, come on, stay with me, here. Open your eyes, if you can.”

Loki opened his mouth to say something, but the resulting sound wasn’t even quite a syllable, though a bit of blood collected at the corner of his mouth when it made him grimace. He opened his eyes instead and shot Anthony an agony-fogged look.

“Noted: you shouldn’t try to talk for a bit, apparently. That rock must’ve been keeping that working, until you took out what was stopping all that blood filling up your lungs,” Anthony said. He rested his forehead against Loki’s.

The vampire nodded once in agreement, swallowing tightly.

“This won’t kill you, right?”

Loki shook his head in a negative, not enough to break contact between Anthony’s brow and his own. He held up three fingers to indicate he need about three minutes, and he be fine.

“Good. Because I’d have to kill you.”

Loki’s lips twitched with a hint of amusement, and he leaned heavily against the inventor, breathing very gingerly, and shallowly, so that he didn’t wind up exhaling blood, for a couple of minutes, oddly comforted just to have the mad inventor close like this.

“Would blood help?”

Blinking a bit, Loki considered for a long moment, then shrugged slightly with his right shoulder. He could already feel the broken bones in his chest coming back together shard by shard, and the wound itself, while it still looked horrible, was coming together even quicker, where the more vital layers underneath his slower-repairing rib bones were concerned.

“It gives you energy, though, doesn’t it?”

Loki sat up a bit and reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, pulling out a cloth, which he covered his mouth with and coughed very unpleasantly a few times. Then he rasped, “It does, but I’ve never tried to regain that energy for recovery until after I’d stopped conspicuously bleeding everywhere.” He coughed a bit more. “I’ll be fine enough to get out of here once my lungs clear. This-” He gestured at the wound, which now showed more solid bone over the width of it, rather than gaping open. “-should be fine, once the bones mend.”

“And the part where your heart is missing?”

Loki tangled his fingers in Anthony’s hair and pulled his head down so his ear rested against the right side of his chest. “Hear that?”

“Not missing.”

The vampire nodded.

“Wrong side.”

“Rare condition, carried over from when I was human. It’s called _situs inversus_ _totalis_ , in my case,” he said, his voice gaining a little strength, though he kept it at a whisper to repress another coughing fit: damned blood clotting in his lungs. That part of the healing process never got less unpleasant, and felt just disgusting. “Everything swapped around, organ-wise.” His fingers relaxed, but remained in the Inventor’s hair as Anthony sat back up.

“So _that’s_ how you lived so long.”

“It’s helped on numerous occasions like this, yes,” he admitted. “Sort of an emergency trump card.”

“You bastard.”

Loki smiled a little. “I love you, you know.”

“Is that blood loss talking?”

“Not exclusively.” He glanced around suddenly. “We should get out of here before Bruce starts collapsing the rest of the tunnels, I think. Oh, and we should probably nick those rings.”

“Why?”

Loki blinked at him. “You want to leave it for fates only know who to dig up later and become the next M?”

“Fine, you’ve a point.” Anthony pulled the vampire to his feet gingerly. “You can stand fine?”

“Yes. Just got blood clots in my lungs,” Loki said, sounding a bit strained, then coughed again. “Give me a few moments, this happens every time I get stabbed in the lungs, and it’s consistently awful.”

“You should stop getting stabbed, then,” Anthony shot back, stepping away reluctantly and going to fetch the rings, letting Loki cough up increasingly dry-and-sticky half-lungfuls of blood without anyone watching, and thus retain a little of his dignity.

Rings in hand, he passed them to Loki, who tucked all ten into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, which now no longer had a handkerchief in it. He considered it a sacrifice to the cause.

As if on cue, the walls all shook from a nearby tunnel collapse.

“Time to go,” Anthony said.

“Agreed.”

 

~~

 

Natasha met them near the entrance of the main corridor. Her clothing was rather tattered, and she was keeping pressure on what looked like a long but shallow knife-wound on her left upper-arm with a bit of cloth ripped from her petticoats. “Anthony, good to see you look well. Loki, you look a bit half-dead, even by vampire standards.”

“Ha-bloody-ha, like I’ve never heard that one before,” Loki muttered, his voice only a bit rough-edged and dry-sounding by then, and back to normal polite speaking-volume. “Had fun with Lady Death-strike?”

“She’s under a couple of tons of stone now, so yes. You took out M?”

The vampire and armored lycanthrope both nodded.

“You’re certain?”

“I believe Anthony tore off his head. Very efficient work.”

Natasha’s eyebrows raised a little, but she then shrugged it off casually. “Good.”

They both looked in the direction of the last three off-branching tunnels, one of which the sound of a half-thrilled, half-enraged roar echoed from.

“He’s had far more fun than any of us tonight, I think,” Loki mused.

Anthony and Natasha nodded in unison with matching bitterly-amused half-smiles.

After a few minutes of waiting, and one more collapsed tunnel, Natasha asked innocently, “I thought being stabbed through the heart was meant to be lethal to vampires, Loki? Theoretical lack of pulse not withstanding.”

“You’re mistaking me for those ghoulish corpse-like things that hardly merit the name vampire, on that front. Please don’t do that; I’m an entirely different sort of blood-drinking monster, and I do have a pulse most of the time,” Loki said coldly.

“Some less closely related to ghouls still lack a pulse. In any case, my question still stands.”

“Most of the time?” Anthony asked lightly.

“It’s complicated,” he said to the inventor, then turned back to Natasha. “I’m a unique case, you might say.”

“I can tell that, given you were clearly stabbed there, not shallowly, and you still seem to be quite lively for someone on the receiving end of a wound like that, human, vampire, or otherwise,” the assassin mused.

“He missed,” Loki said simply.

Natasha blinked, looked at the bloody hole in Loki’s jacket, waistcoat, and undershirt, to the still bruised-looking skin beneath. Then she met Loki’s gaze again.

The vampire beamed at her warmly.

Rolling her eyes, Natasha looked back toward the tunnels. “How long until he’s done, do you think?”

A louder rumbling, explosive crash followed shortly thereafter, sending Green Hyde flying out of one of the tunnels, along with some impressive bursts of flame from both tunnel entrances, just before they both were crushed and that whole side of the main chamber developed a few ominous cracks running up from there.

“Ooh, that’s impressive,” Loki said, with open admiration. “Bravo, he found the armories.”

Anthony cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sounds like it’s time to go, Hulk, or did you have other plans?”

“Hulk?” Loki muttered.

“That’s the name the other guy there chose for himself,” Natasha clarified.

And the Hulk stood, dusting himself off slightly before striding over to them. “That was good,” he said, grinning, then looked at the exit tunnel and frowned a little. It was narrower than the entrances to most of the other tunnels, significantly. He held out a hand to Natasha, who efficiently pulled a pair of new trousers from seemingly out of nowhere, and handed them off.

The Hulk proceeded to lumber over to an upended cart and proceed to change behind it.

Loki smirked. “I always thought petticoats would be convenient to hide all sorts of things under. That was not one I expected, though.”

“We all have our tricks. Look at you: your heart is askew.”

“Not askew, as such. It’s in perfectly normal position in relation to rest of my viscera if you must know.”

“That’s unusual. I had a mission to take out a guy with the same thing about six years ago. It’s always disconcerting when you think someone is shot through the heart, only to find they just don’t stop moving afterward.”

“Was that the Duke of Westminster? I recall hearing about that one.”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“That’s a yes.”

“That’s a ‘you’re close’, Loki,” she shot back, smirking.

Bruce then approached, them, shirtless, barefoot, but looking pretty relaxed. “Good to see you all still alive. Natasha, I take it you’ll need stitches?”

The assassin inclined her head in a single affirmative nod.

“Let’s get out of here, then, shall we? That over there just doesn’t look like it’s gonna be stable for too much longer,” Bruce said, indicating the still slowly-growing cracks in the west wall of the chamber.

The others chorused agreement.

On their way out, Bruce noticed the cause for all the blood Loki seemed to be wearing and just asked, “ _Dextrocardia_ , or full _situs inversus_?”

Loki smirked. “The latter.”

“And that carries over with vampirism: interesting. Lucky you, too, that’s likely saved your sorry hide a few times.”

“Oh yes.”

 

~~

 

Upon return to Bruce’s residence, Anthony returned his armor to the basement while the doctor cleaned and stitched up Natasha’s wound, and returned to find Loki tolerantly standing still while Bruce prodded at him and took a few measurements.

“You only like me for my anomalies, Dr. Banner,” Loki said dryly.

“I won’t say they aren’t a significant factor. How fast does bone normally regenerate for you?”

“Depends a bit on how recently I’ve fed. Everything heals slower when energy and power reserves are low.”

“You fed recently then?”

“None of your business, I’m afraid.”

“It’s for science, Loki.”

Loki glanced up and smiled at Anthony faintly. “Darling, do me a favor and deter him, perhaps?”

The inventor smirked, shaking his head a little and said, “He fed recently. I’d know. It was nice. Can I have him back now?”

Bruce shot him a slightly concerned look.

Anthony met it with a wolfish grin. His eyes had remained a bit more gold than brown since he’d torn M’s head off.

The doctor rolled his eyes. “I’m surrounded by the insane.”

“You’re one of us, Doctor,” Natasha reminded.

“I never claimed otherwise. Fine, Mr. Stark: deny mankind further advancement of scientific knowledge on this front, and take this strange vampire away from any further testing tonight.”

“Thank you, Dr. Banner,” Loki said, and stepped away, meeting Anthony at the doorway, a bit surprised but not at all resistant when the man took hold of the front of his waistcoat and used that grip to drag him up the stairs.

Natasha noticed it peripherally and raised her eyebrows. “Huh. I was right about that, then. I’d never seen Anthony actually _jealous_ before.”

“They’re both lunatics.”

“Complimentary forms of lunacy, I think.”

Bruce snorted, amused. “I’ll concede that. They’re as complimentary to one another as gas is to a flame, really.”

“And thus they seem to get on like a house on fire, unsurprisingly.” She shot him a look. “Are you just worried about Anthony, or do you genuinely distrust Loki?”

The doctor considered, sitting down in a nearby chair with a tired sigh. “Worried, really. Loki’s sharp, really sharp, and I think in general he’s a bit more cautious than Anthony...”

“But that’s damning with faint praise?” Natasha suggested.

Bruce smiled at that. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“I think they have a better chance than most,” the assassin said.

“Oh?”

She nodded, sipping delicately from her cup of tea.

“Any elaboration, there?”

“I’ve spent the past month or so hunting Loki off and on. He worked out early on that I wasn’t really in it to kill him, and the longer our chase lasted, the more I could get from the Ten Rings. You learn a great deal about someone, hunting them that way. He and Anthony were crossing paths for months, and apparently knew each other without ever meeting, longer than I’ve been hunting Loki. They’re very alike, in more ways than we’re likely to guess, I think. Also... what do you know about wolves, Bruce?”

“Not much, other than what I’ve learned form medical texts on lycanthropy, and studying Anthony’s condition.”

Natasha smiled a little. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that Anthony had such a reputation for being promiscuous, for so many years, but the whole time we’ve known him, he’s had one steady lover, Miss Potts, and few if any others, casual or otherwise, that anyone has heard about, over the years since?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“You know I was taught to hunt monsters and men alike. There is something my teachers in Russia knew well, given the sort of lycanthropes they have in parts of that country, Siberia particularly. There are still packs of them, some multi-generational, even. Hunters can’t follow where they go, so no one has ever wiped them all out as with other places in the world,” Natasha said simply. “Just like other wolves, bonded pairs remain together for life. They taught us this as a warning, for so many hunters would shoot one wolf, and not think the wolf’s mate would hunt them down more ruthlessly than most any men ever could. One followed a man all the way to St. Petersburg. The end results were... creative.”

“Oh.”

The assassin nodded.

“Think the vampire knows?”

“I think if he didn’t know before, he’s worked out Anthony’s intentions by now.”

The doctor hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right, then. If anyone knows the significance of a lifetime bond, it would be a vampire that’s lived a couple dozen human lifetimes himself.”

“And I can’t say I’ve met anyone else intelligent and unfathomable enough to hold Anthony’s attention for anywhere near that length of time.”

Bruce laughed. “Very true.”

 

~~

 

Loki hadn’t been altogether surprised to find himself pinned rather roughly against the bedroom door not long after it was shut and locked, but somehow the ensuing heat and desperation not only from Anthony, but also himself, managed to shock him a bit. He didn’t recall vanishing their clothing himself, but it seemed the only explanation for how quickly it all disappeared. All he really remembered was Anthony’s mouth and hands, hot and greedy, and the low, quiet sounds the inventor made in his throat, that now made him think of the inventor’s wolf-shape. Loki wanted to drown in him: hot and alive and wonderful. When they parted, he felt almost chilled.

“Don’t you dare scare me like that again,” Anthony said, his voice not quite even. “And never pull a sacrifice move like––”

“I knew it wouldn’t kill me.”  
“Yes, but _I_ didn’t.” He pulled back just enough to glare. “You could warn me about important details like that.”

“I––well, I hadn’t known I was going to be stabbed through the chest, but I see your point.” Loki lowered his head, arms around the inventor’s waist pulling him closer. “I’m sorry.”

“I just found you, you bastard. You’re not allowed to die yet.”

The vampire’s eyes widened a little and he swallowed thickly. “Tony-”

“You aren’t the only one in love, here. I thought we covered that, a couple of times, and not always in the middle of sex.”

At a sudden and decidedly unusual loss for words, Loki pulled him in closer, kissing fervently, with a mixture of disbelief and reverence, earning a faint moan form the inventor, who shuddered and put up absolutely no resistance when Loki pushed and unbalanced him then pinned him against the wall beside the door hard enough to rattle a nearby painting hung on it. Then his focus again narrowed to the wet heat of Anthony’s mouth, the slightly shaking, surprisingly strong body arching against his trying to get closer, and _closer_ was everything Loki wanted just then.

“I’m not capable of self-sacrifice, you know,” he panted, pulling Anthony away from the wall. “I’m too selfish. I want too badly. I don’t see the point in sacrificing myself to save what I then won’t be able to have.”

Anthony laughed, a bit breathlessly, then stumbled back as the bed hit the backs of his legs. He gave a stifled groan of approval when Loki joined him on the bed, pressed close, kissing his neck. “That’s good,” the inventor panted. “I like you selfish that way.”

“I should hope so. You’re what I most want,” Loki countered.

“Godyesplease.”

The vampire’s lips brushed his, then, briefly. “I want to drink you down and have you, while I’ve got you in my veins. It’s fucking perfect, you know. You’re already brilliant and fascinating outside this, and then every taste I get of you is more beautiful: your blood, your heart, and things you give to me with both. You’re so perfect it’s terrifying.”

“Loki, please. Please, I want to know you’re alive, I need to feel you, please.”

“Yes,” Loki murmured, lips light on Anthony’s, pulling a gentle kiss, then moving down, nipping at his jaw, licking at his throat and suddenly feeling the effects of the nights marauding and fighting and excessive blood loss. He gave a low moan against the tender skin over Anthony’s pulse and heard another low sound, between growl and whimper, from the inventor now arching up, tilting his head further back. “You, oh, why haven’t I had you like this always,” he whispered, and bit down, tenderly precise and sharp, shuddering as blood filled his mouth. _Forest as smell and sensation, pull of moon-tide, the satisfactory sounds of cracking bones, the sensation of running, and something, new that cut to the quick: sensation of heartbreak_. Loki was almost startled how close it all was to the surface, the wolf-thoughts and fresh memories alike. It flooded through him like fire through dry timber and he drank it down, hot and smooth, copper and spice, life and power. It filled his head, left him shaking, taking up all of his attention until he heard and felt the breathless moan that vibrated up Anthony’s throat, and felt Anthony writhing under him, gasping and desperate for more contact, more friction; although when Loki released his throat, the bowstring-taught tension half-drained away, so they were both left shaking.

Loki tugged Anthony’s left hand down to rest over his heart. “You’ll know. I swear, I won’t again. I’ll tell you so you’ll know.”

The inventor stared up at him, momentarily bemused. Then his expression suddenly cleared with understanding and relief. “Caught that did you?”

The vampire nodded. “This,” he said quietly, pressing Anthony’s palm more firmly against his chest, “is yours. If you’ll have it.”

“I thought we were being hasty _before_.”

“Tony.”

“Tonight I found out you can terrify me, and hurt me, pretty damn badly, Loki.”

“I can’t promise that I can always prevent that.”

“Goes both ways.”

Loki swallowed tightly. “I know. I still want you too badly to care, and I rather want to keep hold of you until you can’t stand me any longer.”

“When did you last visit the Americas?”

“Three years ago; I spent most of my time on the west coast, but I think I prefer the eastern seaboard, generally.”

“Feel like seeing New York again, for a while? Maybe in about two months or so, when I head back there?”

Loki’s eyes widened a little, a bit stunned as it at last fully sunk in that this man wanted him in his life as rather more than occasionally, and not even very secretively. It also fully sunk in that Anthony Stark was clearly out of his mind. Somehow, this caused Loki’s face to break out in an incandescently happy grin so wide it hurt.

As was only fair, it sent Anthony absolutely spare and took his break away. “That’s a yes?”

“This, Anthony, is a yes,” Loki purred, and kissed him again, curling close, wrapping around him and moving against him until the inventor wrapped a leg around his waist and tugged with a low, desperate sound. Obligingly, Loki summoned a vial of oil with a flick of the wrist and set about using it, slicking himself thoroughly and lining himself up, though his fingers teased a little, questioning.

“Just take me,” the inventor gasped, breaking the kiss. “S’fine, get on with it.”

Loki groaned softly and obeyed, pushing into his lover’s body in one smooth, slightly hasty thrust, dragging a frankly beautiful noise up from Anthony’s throat, which Loki proceeded to nip at as his hips pulled back, and thrust in again, harder. “Do you know now good you feel, Tony? Hot and tight, and you get so pliant, I can taste how much you want this without even taking a bite.”

“Still, I like you biting,” Anthony managed, breathless. “Fuck you’re aim ‘s just not fair, Loki–– _AH_.”

“Like this?” he asked lightly, after changing the angle of his thrusts and adding more force, while dragging the inventor’s leg higher up his waist. The continued, incoherent and varying intonations of that ‘ah’ syllable from Anthony were almost better than words. “I can slow if you like.”

“No! No, fuck, how do you–– _ah_ ––god, Loki-”

“How do I what?”

Anthony growled in response, pulling Loki back down for another kiss, hands tangled in that slightly-long black hair, holding him close and drowning him in desire and hunger: both his own, and his lover’s. Then Loki’s free hand wrapped around the mad inventor’s cock, stroking in time with each thrust, just rough enough to make Anthony break the kiss with a gasp.

“I want more of you,” Loki rasped.

“I want you to take it.”

“Why?” the vampire asked, a bit of acute need for understanding breaking through the mix of carnal lust and bloodlust alike, even as his lips and teeth brushed the inventor’s throat.

“What says ‘you’re mine’ more than having you go around with my blood keeping you warm and alive?” Anthony managed, breathless. “And I love giving you this, and being taken by you: greedy and dizzying and burning. It feels like drowning in you.”

Loki made an indescribable sound, utterly broken, and bit him again.

Anthony cried out, low and shaky, and came after a few more hard thrusts, gripping Loki’s hips hard enough to bruise, whimpering slightly as the punishing pace the vampire kept never slowed, keeping him on edge for long minutes, and he was kept aware of his own over-sensitized nerves while Loki’s bite made it hard to see, hard to hear, but lit up his nervous system all the more. Anthony had never had a recovery time so short, and while it was more than a little agonizing discovering the perks of his own inhuman recuperative powers, he still only wanted more.

Releasing the inventor’s throat, Loki gasped, shuddering with a mixture of sensations: some from his own body, some lingering echoes from Anthony that threatened to sent him over the edge. He stopped abruptly with a groan, clinging hard to his last shreds of restraint. “On your front,” he panted.

Boneless and a bit dazed, Anthony made a reluctant noise.

“Now,” Loki urged, pulling out.

With hiss of loss and discomfort, the inventor obeyed, then made a startled sound when Loki yanked him to the edge of the bed.

“Spread your legs, feet on the floor.”

Anthony obeyed, even as he muttered, “Why’d you have to stop? OH FUCK.”

Sheathed in his lover’s body again, Loki pressed close as he could, nearly no space between them, and cupped Anthony’s jaw in one hand, pulling his head back to expose the line of his throat. “Like that angle, do you?” He executed the same motion again, harder, not stopping this time, just pounding home until the inventor was scrambling at the sheets for purchase and making those little wolf-like noises again. “You do, I think.” He adjusted the angle of Anthony’s jaw and bit down hard again.

This time, that would have been a scream in response from the inventor, if Loki hadn’t had the foresight to cover his mouth, as Anthony came so hard he nearly collapsed into a shuddering heap, if not for the vampire still holding him up.

Loki followed him, tasting bliss and pain and possessiveness on his tongue, shooting through him along with his own orgasm, leaving him gasping, scarcely able to keep the both of them from falling to the floor. With a herculean effort, he managed to get them both back onto the bed more comfortably. Even once they settled, Anthony was boneless and seemingly only half-aware, curled against Loki’s chest, which was pretty gratifying. Loki carded a hand through the inventor’s hair a few time, absent-mindedly affectionate.

“Best. In m’life. Goddamn you’re good,” the inventor muttered after several minutes, his arm snaking around Loki’s waist.

“Same. And I’ve had several centuries more experience, so feel free to brag,” Loki muttered, and gave a contented sigh, eyes falling shut. “I’ve not actually been to New York in almost ten years. I’ve been in England far too long, doubtlessly. I’ve been chasing the Ten Rings throughout Europe too long, in general.”

Anthony tilted his head up and back slightly to get a look at his serenely content expression. “Let me reacquaint you with New York, then.”

“I’d like that.”

“So I can keep you?”

“Yes, Tony. I’m all yours.”

Speechless, exhausted, and hopelessly happy, Anthony shifted a little, nuzzling at Loki’s neck. “You’re damn right you are.”

With an amused snort, Loki muttered, “I should hope so. I’d feel quite jilted otherwise, at this point.”

Anthony gave an amused huff, and covered Loki’s mouth with one hand. “Sleep. When you wake up, I plan to have at you until we manage to break this bed.”

Loki took hold of his wrist, placed a kiss in the center of his palm, and settled the mad inventor’s arm back around his waist again. “Perfect.”


End file.
